Kevin's made the point before, and repeats it today, that Democrats have to run to the center more than Republicans because more people identify as conservative than liberal and therefore, they have to appeal to fewer "moderates" or people in the center than the Democrats do. Or put another way, since there are so many more people in their base, they have to pander to it to win while the Democrats have to pander to the center in order to get a majority.
The problem with this analysis is that he thinks all this has something to do with how people self-identify, as if the people who identify as "conservative" are all really conservative or the moderates and liberals are truly moderate and liberal. I don't know that that's the case. Sure it's true in some cases, but I don't think people necessarily identify with these ideological labels out of ideology. It's more of a tribal ID or a social designation.
And I think it's fairly clear that a huge propaganda campaign to demonize the word liberal that has lasted nearly 30 years has taken its toll on the willingness of people to wear it. Even I, old time lib that I am, have found myself in large social and business situations in which self-identifying as a liberal is uncomfortable....
Boy howdy! As they say in the trade. The GOP just voted to block discussion of the Defense Authorization Act. If Dems had done this, the only thing you'd hear for the next week would have been, "Why do the Democrats hate the troops?" And yet, not only do the Democrats not even dream of making such a politically potent attack on Republican obstructionists, the Republican senators are acting in defense of a position that even a majority of Republicans oppose. How, exactly does Kevin Drum's reasoning explain that? Simple: It doesn't.
This vote was all about identity politics and the culture war, which conservatives understand is what all votes are about. Because this was such an unpopular position to take, this vote is extremely instructive. Republican senators (even so-called "moderates" like Collins and Snowe) had to vote against repealing DADT, because it was a core culture war matter. Accepting DADT would be accepting "the homosexual agenda", and that would mean capitulating on a defining conservative narrative of the past 30 years. Eventually, of course, they will have to capitulate, and after they do, some future Glenn Beck will then explain why conservatives were the real gay rights activists all along. But we're not there yet. We're still at the point where hard core activist fever demands that DADT be defended at all costs.
Of course this won't even fly with most Republicans or even a good chunk of self-described conservatives. Which is the main reason why Republican senators offered all sorts of bogus explanations for their votes--explanations that Rachel Maddow ripped to shreds on her show last night. Of course the explanations are ludicrous. But if you're a good little tribalist, you won't even hear, much less pay attention to, anyone who will even think of questioning them, much less ripping them to shreds. This is the beauty of multi-decade hegemonic warfare, it creates a situation in which you have multiple layers of defense that function automatically. For the hard core, you have the extremist position and the narrative of total demonization of groups and individuals. For the substantively not-quite-so-lockstep, you have the amped-up epistemic closure, which now encompasses more people more persistently than any time previously in American history, and you have that epistemic closure backed up by the narrative of the terribly biased liberal media. And for those in the middle, you have the "both sides do it" balance meme.
I've made this argument for years now: the number of people supporting the hard-core conservative position on issues is miniscule, which is why complex, multi-level deception is central to the conservative movement. This is from early 2006 ("The Rightwing Group Slander Of Liberals Refuted-Part 5F"):
A Fringe Minority
As I repeated just above, the position that abortion is murder (not homicide-which can justifiable, in the case of rape, incest, or threat to the mother's life, for example-but murder) is a fringe minority position, much like opposition to welfare state spending. In fact, it's even more of a fringe position. A mere 8.1% of the population opposes abortion in all three cases in the AbThreat scale [abortion in the case of rape, incest or threat to health of the mother] during the most recent timeframe.
It's even more revealing if we put these two conditions together: opposition to welfare state spending and to all abortions on the AbThreat scale. The NatSpend6Sp scale measures attitudes toward six welfare state spending questions. Running cross-tabs between NatSpend6Sp and AbThreat yields the following:
The bold numbers are percentages. In the lower right-hand corner, the intersection of two fringe positions-one 16.6%, the other 6.4% (a bit lower than the 7.3% in the total survey population)-comes out to just 1.2%. This is the percentage of people who hold two key movement conservative positions: that abortion is murder, and that the welfare state should be cut. In contrast, the two boxes in the upper left-hand corner total to 55.9%. That's the intersection of those wanting to increase welfare state spending and supporting abortion in all three cases in the AbThreat scale. That's the liberal position that's "out of touch with the American people," according to folks in the 1.2% lower right-hand corner.
It's amazing how much power these people have, given how marginal their attitudes are. They have been the driving force behind 30+ years of culture war, that has produced remarkably little over-all change in levels of support and opposition to abortion rights. And yet they remain a tiny fringe.
That's the tiny fringe that Republicans have to cater to, according to Kevin Drum.
It's all done with mirrors. Blue smoke and mirrors. And folks like Drum--on the left--are actually part of the deception, without even realizing it.
Now that's hegemony. And that's what we're up against. Not a puny 1.9% of the population.
As Pogo famously said, "We have met the enemy and they are us."
