So the Cat Food Commission is proposing that poor and middle-class Americans do all the heavy lifting when it comes to "putting our fiscal house in order". This should come as no great surprise. "Serious" Washington chin-scratchers are indebted to the rich and despise the very idea of entitlements. Always have, always will.
How, then, do right-wing austerity thugs in the mold of Alan Simpson plan to get themselves elected if they're sending the vast majority of voters straight to the poorhouse? That's simple. They'll use four time-honored Republican strategies:
1) Get people to fear and distrust their government. Tactics: congenital right-wing incompetence (see Hurricane Katrina); intentional underfunding of critical services; incessant anti-government propaganda from Fox News and the right-wing hate machine.
2) Lower people's expectations - permanently. That's what they mean when they tell you to "tighten your belt". You'll be hearing that every day for the rest of your life.
3) Exploit the enemy within.Illegal immigrants.Gays. Muslims. Various ethnic groups. Liberals. The unemployed. Scapegoat groups of people whom your target voters can blame for the misery you're causing them. Use whatever group works at the time.
4) Exploit the enemy without. When in trouble - start a war. Works like a charm.
In my recent diary, "Pathologizing conservatism: The demonization of Park51 as template for a case study", I discussed a set of three theories considered in the 2003 meta-analysis, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition" (PCMSC). These three theories fall into the category of "Epistemic and Existential Need Theories" which "place particular emphasis on the mutually constitutive role of cognitive and motivational processes in determining conservative response tendencies." Put simply, certain motivations lead to certain thought processes, which in turn lead lead to certain motivations.
In that diary, I focused primarily on Lay Epistemic Theory, whose most salient concern was "the need for cognitive closure, which refers to the expedient desire for any firm belief on a given topic, as opposed to confusion and uncertainty." But the weekend rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear highlights another theory that I also touched on briefly, Regulatory Focus Theory. PCMSC explains it thus:
This theory distinguishes between two categories of desired goals, namely those related to advancement, growth, and aspirations (ideals) and those related to safety, security, and responsibilities (oughts). Distinct regulatory systems are presumed to address these two classes of
goals. The promotion system reflects individuals' self-regulation in relation to their hopes and aspirations (ideals), and it gratifies nurturance needs. The goal of the promotion system is accomplishment. By contrast, the prevention system reflects self-regulation in relation to one's duties and obligations (oughts), and the goal of this system is safety. According to this theory, a parenting history of protection focusing on the avoidance of negative outcomes combined with the exercise of punishment as a disciplinary tool produces a strong prevention focus as a stable individual orientation. A parenting style of encouraging accomplishments by focusing on achieving positive outcomes and withdrawing love as a form of discipline produces a strong promotion focus as a stable individual orientation.
It is also plausible that an emphasis on prevention (vs. promotion) induces a heightened need for cognitive closure as one consequence of the craving for a secure and comprehensible reality.
These two different orientations have multiple connections that spring readily to mind. There is a clear relationship to Lakoff's "Strict Father"/"Nurturant Parent" model for political conservatism and liberalism, obviously. There's also a clear relationship to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the broad categories of safety needs vs. growth needs, as well as to his work in the psychology of science, distinguishing between safety science and growth science, which hearkens back to William James' identification of two distinct epistemic imperatives in science: "seek truth" vs. "shun error." And there's a connection to Douglas McGregor's Theory X vs. Theory Y in management theory, just to cite a few obvious examples.
Two days ago Great Britain held a general election to decide the country's government over the next few years. Facing discontent and a nation thirsty for change, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the governing Labor Party were soundly defeated. The challenging Conservative Party, led by David Cameroon, gained 97 seats but failed to take a majority in Parliament. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats, who had surged after a strong performance in the first debate by their leader Nick Clegg, badly underperformed their expectations.
This election offers a useful study of a political system outside of the United States. While more similar to the United States than most countries, Great Britain's electorate also offers a number of intriguing differences.
A map of the results illustrates several aspects of this system:
As I wrote a few weeks back, when I sat down to write my book The Progressive Revolution on the history of the American political debate, I knew that the themes that animated our current political debate would be the same as in the past.
What I underestimated was that we would start to re-fight some of the exact same issues that have been fairly settled for the last 50 years or even longer. It is a sign of how radical conservatives in the last couple of years have become that they are raising issues that have seemed settled for so many decades. Republican nominees and elected officials for major offices have, over the last few months, made open arguments for:
-the repeal of the 17th amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1914, allowing people to vote directly for their Senator rather than have them appointed by the state legislature
Now comes the most radically extreme proposal yet: Senate Majority Leader McConnell and other Republicans are now calling for amending or even outright repeal of the 14th amendment to the Constitution. To understand how profoundly reactionary this proposal is, let me refer to my book:
The 14th Amendment was passed at the height of the Radical Republican frustration at Johnson’s alliance with Southern conservatives on Reconstruction. Section 1 asserted that the federal government, not the states, decided who US citizens were and gave that citizenship to all those born in the United States or naturalized by the federal government. The states were prohibited from denying those citizens their civil rights and “the equal protection of the law.” It was the first time the Constitution created a definition of national citizenship as opposed to just leaving it to the states. Section 2 stated that any state denying the right to vote to any of its (male) citizens was to proportionally lose seats in Congress and the Electoral College. Sections 3 and 4 denied Southerners who had held federal office before the war and then served the rebel cause the right to run for federal office again, and ensured that the debts that the Confederacy had incurred would never be paid by either federal or state governments. The 14th Amendment was designed by progressives to be a long term stake in the heart of states’ rights and slave power by asserting that the federal government, not the states, had the right to guarantee American citizens their civil and political rights under the law. It literally extended the Bill of Rights to all American citizens, no matter what state they lived in, and gave the federal government the power to enforce those rights.
A little background: contrary to right wing hagiography, our founding fathers were not gods or perfect men. There were some brilliant and courageous people among them, but they were politicians not that dissimilar to the current crop. Some, like Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, Ben Franklin, and George Mason were more progressive minded thinkers, while some were more conservative, and all were products of the time and the white, male, privileged constituencies that elected them. The constitution that was written, like every other set of laws written by politicians, thus had flaws in it. Not only was slavery embedded into the document, but the authors of the constitution agreed to a series of compromises with the strongly pro-slavery politicians from the deep South that were designed to make slavery a permanent part of our nation rather then phasing it out as even some slaveholders (like Jefferson) proposed. These provisions – chief among them the notorious 3/5 of a man rule for counting slaves in the census for Congressional apportionment – combined with the constitutional conventioneers just punting on the issues around who gets to vote/have basic civil rights/be a citizen and leaving those crucial issues to the states left the country heading inexorably to a civil war. The compromises of 1820 and 1850 just delayed the inevitable. Lincoln was right, the country could not survive as half slave and half free.
From a Keynesian standpoint, I believe that with the economy depressed it's better to spend the money in Afghanistan than not to spend it.
There was a whole lot else wrong with that post, I thought. Enough to do a diary about. But before doing that, I just want to take one part of it for a jumping-off point.
Matt begins:
People who believe that the war in Afghanistan is important to the long-term interests of the United States of America are absolutely, unequivocally correct to vote to spend tens of billions of dollars on it notwithstanding the adverse impact that has on the deficit. I think we should be clear about that. If you think this war is important, then you should blow up the deficit to get the job done.
But is war spending really a conservative priority, while domestic spending is not? Or is this just your normal elite conservative burn-the-house down politics-as-usual? Nearly 30 years of General Social Survey data strongly suggests its the later. Looking only at self-identified conservatives, I took the average of 6 component items from my NatSpend6Sp index:
NATCITY: Solving problems of big cities
NATEDUC: Improving nations education system
NATENVIR: Improving protecting environment
NATFARE: Welfare
NATHEAL: Improving protecting nations health
NATRACE: Improving the conditions of blacks
for those saying we were spending "too little," "too much" or "about right", and subracted the corresponding figures for military spending. Even though this index contains the highly unpopular "welfare" item (which scores far lower than "assistance to the poor", for example), we see that conservatives generlly think we're spending "too little" on domestic programs, rather than defense, As you can see in the chart, the only times this has not been so were the around the late 70s/early 80s when the phony Soviets-are-going-to-kill-us-all scare helped bring Reagan to office, and the early 2000s, when Republicans were pushing a similar theme about Democrats fatally weakening our military:
Note how quickly and dramatically those passing phases melted away. So what's all this about what conservatives believe is important?
Republican "free market" economic policies are explicitly designed to concentrate the nation's wealth in as few hands as possible. As collateral damage, the middle class will necessarily be ground into dust. Hence, in a democratic system of government, the only way the GOP will be able to hold on to power is by attempting to exploit divisive social issues.
This is because, in economic terms, Republicans have nothing to offer their struggling foot soldiers except slogans. And -- to paraphrase Hillary Clinton -- you can't eat a slogan.
Filling the void, slick right-wing operators like Andrew Breitbart stand ready to serve up double portions of cultural red meat -- but on their own timetable.
Shirley Sherrod scenarios will arise, in myriad forms, for years to come. Sometimes they will seem to benefit Republicans, sometimes they won't. In either case, GOP politicians will be powerless to control them. They'll simply have to ride the tiger and try to spin things to their political advantage.
"Flashpoint" racial politics will be a major part of the conservative playbook going forward. Progressives need to be ready to combat it.
In a move that would make Tea Partiers proud, the loony right Canadian minority government is trying to eliminate Canada's Long-Form census, source of basic demographic, social, and economic information about Canada and its people. Even George Bush didn't do that! They think it's tyrannical state coercion and intrusion, and possibly don't want people to know the results of their policies. Some of us up here (I'm an expat) are trying to fight back:
As a follow-up to my earlier post, "Identity economics--a major breakthrough?", here's a look at how differences in ideological identities produce different activities, while simultaneously revealing a major conceptual problem with the minimalist "Third Way" infatuation with "nudges".
A couple of weeks back, at the Monkey Cage, Erik Voeten called attention to a very interesting finding about how Cass Sunstein-touted "nudges" can work like a charm to reduce energy consumption with liberals, but utterly fail with conservatives, who actually increased their energy usage in response to nudges pushing them the other way. This is, I believe, a fascinating example of how Identity Economics can help shed light on the limits of more narrow-minded technocratic fixes--and possibly even help to craft them more intelligently. (It should be noted that Sunstein's "nudges" are presented within the context of "behavioral economics", and take into account deviations from perfect information along the lines of Akerlof's earlier work, but they still fall within the overall narrative framework pushed by market fundamentalists that privileges approaches that don't rock the boat, don't raise systemic questions, and don't challenge existing structures of power.) Here's Erik:
This is pretty startling evidence of how political polarization affects every day life choices, and not in a good way (although the effects are not huge). The NBER paper [by Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn] is here, a short discussion by the authors is here and the abstract is below.
"Nudges" are being widely promoted to encourage energy conservation. We show that while the electricity conservation "nudge" of providing feedback to households on own and peers' home electricity usage works with liberals, it can backfire with conservatives. Our regression estimates predict that a Democratic household that pays for electricity from renewable sources, that donates to environmental groups, and that lives in a liberal neighborhood reduces its consumption by 3 percent in response to this nudge. A Republican household that does not pay for electricity from renewable sources and that does not donate to environmental groups increases its consumption by 1 percent.
In the discussion, the researchers add:
If the same message "turns on" greens but "turns off" more conservative individuals, then to reach out to all members of a diverse population requires a mixed-messages strategy....
To design nudges effectively, a "nudger" must anticipate how diverse subjects will respond. We have shown that while energy conservation nudges work with liberals, they backfire with conservatives. Greens may reduce their consumption in response to the receipt of a Home Energy Report because both private and social effects work in the same direction. They want to be good global citizens and suffer when they are made aware that they are "part of the problem."
The obvious lesson for field experiments is that on polarised issues even seemingly innocuous messages may trigger perverse effects. What works on average in this California county may not work on average in Lubbock, Texas if the proportion of greens is less.
Conservatives have historically argued against progressive policies on a variety of fronts: the unintended consequences of change, the primacy of the individual over government, the dangers of a growing bureaucracy (or more generically, "big government"), the importance of traditional values and local control, the worry of people growing too dependent on government, etc. With increasing vehemence, though, conservatives have begun to argue that kind-heartedness, compassion, and a sense of community are actually evil: that they lead inevitably to Nazism and death camps.
Political debate has always been hot and heavy in this country, with conservatives swinging hard and heavy and making some pretty wild claims: the pro-British Tories in the 1770s decried the "rats of democracy"; the pro-slavery Southern planters in the first half of the 1800s said that slaves were better off than if they were free; the Social Darwinists said society would be better off if the poor were allowed to starve to death, because their death would improve the gene pool. But the compassion equals evil argument didn't really get laid out in detail until Ayn Rand's writings, where she actually did argue that people with compassion and concern for others were leeches who drained society of its competitive life blood.
Just as Ayn Rand took the Social Darwinist argument and made it more virulent, the conservative author Jonah Goldberg brought a new, more extreme twist to the argument, literally saying that progressives like FDR were ideological soul mates of Hitler and Mussolini's brand of fascism. This easily debunked book has become the right's excuse for accusing everyone arguing for progressive causes of being a Nazi.
Glenn Beck is, of course, the present day leader of the pack when it comes to this kind of invective. Here's his latest insight on the subject:
There was a fascinating contrast in two articles in the New York Times yesterday. The first was a news article, which I discussed in a post yesterday, which referenced the fact that Wall Street chieftains are privately relieved that the new financial reform bill, while it nicks them here and there and does add to/ toughen up some key regulations, doesn't fundamentally shift the way Wall Street does business. The second was a Paul Krugman editorial discussing the anger that many corporate leaders have toward Obama, and the huge amount of money they are shoveling to Republican candidates and conservative causes as a result.
It's an intriguing contradiction: on health care, on financial reform, on energy policy, on so many other issues, the administration and congressional Democrats are passing or pushing legislative changes that don't offer a fundamental transformation of the way big business operates in America. What they are offering instead is relatively mild reforms. Yet corporate bigwigs and their Republican allies are acting like we're moving toward socialist Armageddon.
No one thing explains this odd dynamic. Some of it is tactical: cynical corporate PR/legislative strategists figuring that if they scream bloody murder, they can move the debate more in their direction, and keep future legislative fights from going too far in the progressive direction. On the Democratic side, both tactically and psychologically, many Democrats want to claim that they are doing big bold things even when the actual legislation is a little less far reaching than the rhetoric suggests.
The biggest factor, though, is that big corporate interests are used to getting so much of what they want that when anything doesn't go exactly their way, they are stunned and outraged. From the 1930s to the 1960s, big corporations were still quite powerful, but they were not dominant: labor was stronger then than it is today, Democrats stood up to them more, regulators tended to be more aggressive. But for the last 40 years, conservative, pro-corporate Presidents have been in charge most of the time, and even when Democrats controlled Congress, there were enough boll weevil/blue dog/DC type of pro-corporate Democrats in Congress that they were able to form an alliance with Republicans to keep anything bad from happening to the big corporate interests. The Democratic Presidents we have had in this era- Carter, Clinton, and now Obama- have been pretty conservative in their economic policy. As the pigs at the trough never were forced to share the food they were eating, they grew even bigger and more powerful, making their ability to control politicians, push around regulators, and wreak havoc on the economy grow worse and worse.
Is this finally beginning to change? It depends on your perspective. Some of my progressive friends think that Obama and congressional Dems are almost as bad as the Republicans in terms of coddling Corporate America. Some of my optimistic friends in progressive politics like Bob Creamer think we are breaking through in a major way, setting the stage for bigger triumphs in the near future. And of course those corporate lobbyists who are screaming socialism at the top of their lungs and giving a lot more to Republican candidates can't believe they are only getting their way 80% of the time instead of 100%.
I am not as optimistic as Bob, nor as pessimistic as, for example, some of the folks at Firedoglake. As I have written before, I think we are breaking through a little, making some modest steps forward, but have a long way to go. What I do think is far more important than the debate between optimists and pessimists, though, is that some real thought go into what happens next. If Democrats shy away from picking fights with corporate special interests because of their growling, I fear the worse politically: in this volatile anti-establishment atmosphere, caution is what loses. We have to lean into the punch, and then punch back hard ourselves, to have a chance in the 2010 elections. The great thing about the corporate howling is that an a populist, anti-corporate special interest narrative is the best hope by far for the Democrats, and the Republicans are playing into our hands by opposing financial reform, defending the Citizens United decision, and embracing the corporate screamers. Retreat means defeat right now, both in electoral politics and in the question of whether this change moment becomes bigger or dissipates into the mist.
Taxes, more than any other issue is what drives the Tea Party movement. Thus those philosophical arguments related to taxation and the resulting size of government constitute the very essence of the rationale for the movement's existence. How then will the movement react and adapt to the latest findings of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which reveal the movement's essential positions to be clearly at odds with empirical facts? As such, the Tea Party movement may soon find that the very rationale for its existence is being fundamentally challenged by a reality very much at variance with the movement's belief system. Likewise, the Republican rhetoric about taxes increasing may also start to ring hollow.
The Bureau's findings as reported by UPI are as follows: "Including state, federal and local taxes -- with sales tax and property tax thrown in -- the average tax bill came out to 9.2 percent of personal income in 2009.... That's down from an average of 12 percent over the past 50 years. The tax burden has not been this low since 1950...The U.S. tax burden has shrunk to its lowest level in 60 years...The tax rate has fallen 26 percent since 2007, a sharp drop that reflects progressive tax rates passed during the Clinton and Bush administrations and the 2009 federal stimulus bill that cut taxes by $800 for married couples earning up to $150,000." The Bureau's findings are just the latest in a growing body of evidence that refutes the basic premise which the Tea Party movement relies upon to energize its followers and fuel it's much hoped for transformation of American government. In a piece that followed this years Tax Day Protests, the Associated Press observed: "Lost in the rhetoric was that taxes have gone down under Obama. Congress has cut individuals' federal taxes for this year by about $173 billion, leaving Americans with a lighter load despite nearly $29 billion in increases by states."
In an article, which appeared in Forbes in March; "The Misinformed Tea Party Movement", conservative writer Bruce Bartlett outlined just how little members of the Tea Party movement actually knew about the structure and level of taxation. Utilizing a survey of movement protestors at a recent rally Bartlett found: "Tuesday's Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944... In short, no matter how one slices the data, the Tea Party crowd appears to believe that federal taxes are very considerably higher than they actually are, whether referring to total taxes as a share of GDP or in terms of the taxes paid by a typical family." In contrast in 2009 the corresponding number was 14.8%. When it comes to the structure and composition of taxes, the Bartlett article is chock full of repudiation for just about everything that the Tea Partiers believe in and that does not bode well for a movement that has as one of it's stated goals, the reconstitution of the size of American government based on its belief that taxes are too high and that they will crowd private borrowers out of the credit markets. Bartlett sums up his skeptisim of the Tea Party movement with an insightful statement that points out just how confused the Tea Partiers may be: "It's hard to explain this divergence between perception and reality. Perhaps these people haven't calculated their tax returns for 2009 yet and simply don't know what they owe. Or perhaps they just assume that because a Democrat is president that taxes must have gone up, because that's what Republicans say that Democrats always do. In fact, there hasn't been a federal tax increase of any significance in this country since 1993." And to think, such an observation would roll off the tonuge of an economic censervative who once promoted supply-side theories and who had also worked for Ron Paul!
Ironically, its not just on the issue of taxes that the Tea Party movement is in a bit of a pickle. For one thing, the movement's overall lack of a cohesive strategy for affecting political change works against its durability as a force on the American politcal scene. Atlantic's Michael Kinsley points out that unlike the anti-war movement of the 1960s which had a central theme and aim, the Tea Party movement is so fractionalized in terms of leadership and difuse in its overall ideological makeup so as to be more than a little precarious as a long term movement with staying power. Quoting Kinsley:" Not only do TPPs (Tea Party Patriots) not have one big issue like Vietnam-they disagree about many of their smaller issues. What unites them is a more abstract resentment, an intensity of feeling rather than any concrete complaint or goal." Kinsley points out that in their undefined frustrations the Tea Partiers have in affect discarded the much-cherished notion so dear to the conservative credo, self responsibility, in that everyone's problems can be directly traced back to Washington D.C. or their state capitol. Kinsley defines this inherent flaw in the movement as follows: "Personal responsibility" has been a great conservative theme in recent decades, in response to the growth of the welfare state. It is a common theme among TPPs-even in response to health-care reform, as if losing your job and then getting cancer is something you shouldn't have allowed to happen to yourself. But these days, conservatives far outdo liberals in excusing citizens from personal responsibility. To the TPPs, all of our problems are the fault of the government, and the government is a great "other," a hideous monster over which we have no control. It spends our money and runs up vast deficits for mysterious reasons all its own. At bottom, this is a suspicion not of government but of democracy. After all, who elected this monster?"
There is one other major time bomb ticking away inside the Tea Party movement, and that is the company it keeps. Who are the leading personalities associated with the movement, none other than some of the most controversial characters alive in American politics today: Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck. If Bachmann and Palin weren't the Thelma and Louise of the far right, who would it be? I mean if the G.O.P. ever were to find itself in the back seat of their car they will, like the movie characters find themselves on a joy ride off of a cliff and heading straight for political disaster. It goes without saying, that having Beck as the Tea Party movement's most vocal media personality leaves allot to be desired, unless your aim is to turn the movement into a laughingstock. After all, can you put together a more gruesome threesome than the aforementioned when it comes to alienating independents from the Republican Party? I doubt it.
Lets face it, if it were not for the fact that the Tea Party movement has become the primary pawn in the ideological proxy war between MSNBC and Fox News, its presence on the American political landscape would be far less visible. A recent Quinnipiac Poll found that only 13 percent of American voters say they are part of the Tea Party movement and that this group is largely white, had supported McCain and presently backs Sarah Palin. But in what could be the most telling piece of evidence derived from the Quinnipiac Poll is that: "Overall, this survey paints a picture of the Tea Party movement that encompasses a broad swath of the American middle class, but clearly at this stage one that is a minority group. In essence their numbers equate to about the size of the African-American electorate overall," That said and with that empirical evidence in hand, does anyone really think for a second that the future of American Conservatism or its fellow traveler the G.O.P. is best served by hitching its wagon to the Tea Party movement, especially when that movement has been exposed as containing a fundamental philosophical credo that is so starkly at variance with established political facts and trends.
3) Tea Party Rally Upbraids 'Gangster Government' by The Associated Presshttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125251286&sc=emaf.
4) My Country, Tis of Me, There's nothing patriotic about the Tea Party Patriots. by Michael Kinsleyhttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/04/my-country-tis-of-me/8088/
5) QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY NATIONAL POLL: TEA PARTY COULD HURT GOPhttp://thepage.time.com/quinnipiac-university-national-poll-tea-party-could-hurt-gop/
As the Copenhagen conference rolls on, American concern for global warming appears to have reached a nadir. Poll after poll indicates that Americans are more skeptical of global warming; meanwhile the Senate cap and trade bill appears to be going nowhere fast.
Most pundits attribute this skepticism to partisan politics. The theory goes something like this: with partisan bickering at an all-time high, Republicans are tending to reflexively oppose any Democratic proposal, and vice versa. Because preventing climate change has become associated with liberals, Republican voters are now automatically treading against it. This Times article exemplifies the strain of thought; it is titled "Rising Partisanship Sharply Erodes U.S. Public's Belief in Global Warming."
On the surface, there is a certain credence to this claim. Most would agree that partisanship is "rising." Belief in global warming is also undeniably falling. Add consistent conservative disbelief of global warming, and everything links together.
There is only one problem with this theory: it is not true.
The Political Foundations of A Liberal/Reform Coalition
In Part 1, I introduced Chris's idea of A Liberal/Reform Coalition, which he introduced in his post-2004 election diary, "Eureka! Or How To Break the Republican Majority Coalition". In that diary, Chris identified a non-ideological reform-oriented segment of the population, which has shown up in third-party presidential campaigns since the Populist era, which he talked about thus:
This segment of the electorate can be swung toward the liberal camp, thus breaking the Republican majority coalition, if the pragmatic, non-dogmatic, reformer, anti-status quo, entrepreneurial aspects of liberalism are foregrounded and turned into a national narrative and platform. Pulling this off will also require dismantling the Great Backlash narrative of oppressive liberal elites, and replacing it with a narrative about conservatism being a force that relies on pure theory, faith-based worldviews, and that supports status-quo institutions such as corporations and the media.
In this diary, I want explore what it would take to actually do that, focusing on a few key foundational thrusts.
Millennial Foundations
To begin with, I want to argue that the Democrats have already started down the path Chris suggests, albeit not fully consciously. The Dean campaign was the start of this, and Dean's implementation of the 50-state strategy--which Chris also talked about in a couple of related posts at the time--continued the process. What's key to this was/is creating a vibrant grass-roots political culture in which ideas and initiative can come from below--and, indeed, are encouraged to do so. And the evidence of the success of this can be seen in a recent Pew report, "A Pro-Government, Socially Liberal Generation: Democrats' Edge Among Millennials Slips". This report shows both the enormous potential support among Millenials, as well how Obama's status quo presidency has undercut this support. It's my contention that the significant difference between Millenials and earlier generations you'll see in the chart below is due in large part to their shared perception of the liberal/reform coalition as logical political development--as already demonstrated by the Dean campaign and the 50-state strategy.
Perhaps the most striking evidence of this can be seen by comparing the ideological self-identification of Millennials to other generations:
The difference here is simply astonishing. Even the electorate the gave LBJ a 60-40 landslide victory over Barry Goldwater was significantly more likely to identify itself as "conservative" rather than "liberal" by a margin somewhere between 3-2 and 2-1, a range that the conservative/liberal ratio has stayed within ever since then. Of course, this has been counterbalanced by the fact that a large number of self-identified conservatives actually support liberal policies, particularly on core New Deal social spending issues. But the more that politics revolves around identity, the more this ideological ratio has favored conservatives. With Millennials, this is no longer so. The identification ratio hovers around 1-1 instead.
Immediately following the 2004 election, Chris engaged in nearly month-long period of analysis and reflection, which culminated in a post "Eureka! Or How To Break the Republican Majority Coalition". In it, Chris proposed a very different direction from that of a liberal/libertarian coalition along the lines proposed by Markos (in his Cato Institute "Libertarian Democrat" article) and others. Instead of aligning ourselves with anti-government types, Chris argued we should align ourselves with government-reformer types--voters who could be anti-government in some ways or circumstances, but who were just as much reachable by a messages of reform, transparency and openness. Howard Dean took the party in a promising direction with his 50-state strategy, nurturing the grassroots s never before, and Obama campaigned by appearing to stand for more of the same. But by aligning himself with Wall Street & other insiders, Obama has drastically undercut the logic of the direction Chris laid out, even as libertarians have turned sharply against him, as others, such as Ed Kilgore ("Liberals and Libertarians Finally Break Up") have recently noted. Chris was right on target, I argue in this diary, and to get out of the hole Obama & the Democrats have dug for themselves, we need to get back to the strategy that Chris proposed. It's going to be harder with Obama working against us--no question about it. But it's far and away the most realizable political path forward over the long haul. Let's look at the argument in more detail.
The Potential of A Liberal/Reform Coalition
Specifically, in "Eureka!" Chris wrote:
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. It is, to put it one way, latently liberal. This segment of the electorate can be swung toward the liberal camp, thus breaking the Republican majority coalition, if the pragmatic, non-dogmatic, reformer, anti-status quo, entrepreneurial aspects of liberalism are foregrounded and turned into a national narrative and platform. Pulling this off will also require dismantling the Great Backlash narrative of oppressive liberal elites, and replacing it with a narrative about conservatism being a force that relies on pure theory, faith-based worldviews, and that supports status-quo institutions such as corporations and the media.
More specifically, Chris presented a series of seven maps of significant third party presidential vote strength:
I for one am not surprised at the reports surfacing over the last twenty four hours that there have been attacks, threats and vandalism aimed at Democrats who voted in favor of health care reform. As of this morning there are ten such reported cases, including one that suggested Congressmen (D-MI) should drown himself. Congresswoman Giffords (D-AZ) had the windows of her hometown office broken by some unidentified projectile. There has also been a report of an attack on a Congressman's family member that if accurate, would constitute a federal crime. Having witnessed Congressmen and Senators being spit upon and subject to racial and homosexual slurs by anti-government fanatics this past weekend, why would anyone be surprised by this latest display of incivility?
Shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning that an increase in domestic anti-government violence was a distinct possibility. This report was the subject of much derision from the Right at the time but consider what has happened since then. Since the election of Barack Obama we have had a guy in Pittsburg kill policemen because he was angry that the government was now "Run by Jews" and that it would "take his guns away". We had a guy kill a doctor who performed abortions and then try to frame himself as a patriot in so doing. Sorry but murder is not patriotic. We had a murder at the Holocaust Museum by an individual who when captured said: "This is how you'll get my guns from me". Another anti-government zealot crashed his plane into the IRS building in Austin Texas as if that would in some way actually contribute to the abolition of the agency. In reality, all that this action accomplished was the killing of an innocent man. Only the Pentagon subway stop shooting can legitimately be classified as the work of a mentally incapacitated person, regardless of his anti-government rant. All summer long we had to watch the farcical spectacle of Tea Party patriots playing minuteman by bringing loaded weapons to rallies while holding signs that suggested it was time for a second American Revolution. There are many who will read this and try to make an argument that political violence is now somehow justified, alluding to some sort of Revolutionary War fantasy. There has been all manner of infatuation with ideas of an armed "citizens revolt"; a military coup, even talk of an attempt on the life of the President, all of it being nothing more than the pipe dream of people who have now become political dead enders. It is to be noted by all that these far right fanatics have been aided and abetted in their dangerous fantasies by the reckless rhetoric of Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the professional political entertainers on the far right who masquerade as legitimate political commentators.
The Republican Minority Leader, John Boehner (R-OH) has already issued a statement condemning violence on the floor of the House of Representatives. That is surely commendable as no informed observer of American politics would for a moment believe that the G.O.P. is in favor of such a thing. But I would also urge Congressman Boehner to direct his comments to some in his own party, like Michele Bachmann (R-MN) or those like her who have a history of incendiary anti-government rhetoric in their political track record. When an elected official engages in blatantly reckless and inflammatory behavior it only serves to stoke up the sentiments of those on the far right fringe and can serve, in their minds, as a "call to action." In his assessment of the Republican debacle that has arisen from the passage of health care reform, the veteran conservative commentator David Frum observed: "We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible... So today's defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, its mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, its Waterloo all right: ours." The degree to which increasing levels of political violence detracts or derails the message of the Republican Party in the future is unknowable at this time. But for an organization that is polling the lowest favorability numbers in its history, it is just one more reason for people to disregard the G.O.P. message on Election Day and one more problem the Republican Party can do without.
There will be those on the Right who will issue the counter argument that all one need do is to look back to the sixties and you will find plenty of violence perpetrated by the left. Some will conjure up the various red scares of the past and say that there has been more than on instance in American history where Communists in labor unions and among university professors sought to overthrow or subvert the American way of life. But you can tally up all of the left wing violence in the history of this country and you won't put a dent in the death toll from the Oklahoma City Bombing, an act perpetrated by a violently anti-government fanatic. It is for that reason that it is now the patriotic duty of every American to stand up to the fanatics on the far right, be it at political rallies, on the streets, in the blogs, by calling in to talk radio, by text messaging the Glenn Beck show, etc., or by writing to the media organizations that sanction such programming and registering you opposition to this virulent rhetoric that only serves to fuel politically driven violence and intolerance. The next time some right wing crackpot tells you that he and his compatriots are going to "take back their country" ask them from whom, the people who voted in the majority for change. It is time for Progressives to stand up to thugs and fanatics of any stripe, be they far to either the left or right, and to no longer tolerate threats of violence on the part of those who having lost out in the political arena, have chosen to attempt change through extra legal means.
In an interview following the attack on her office, Congresswoman Giffords said that America was a beacon around the world because we create change via the ballot box and not through political violence and intimidation. In thinking back upon much of the rhetoric from the right that has surrounded the advent of the Obama Administration, I can not help but to recall the warning that Sinclair Lewis made back in the 1930s: "If Fascism ever comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the flag and borne upon a crucifix". In spite of the fact that the country was in a far more perilous position then than it is now, Lewis' words were as relevant today as they were in the midst of the Great Depression and they should be on the minds of every true American patriot.
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