Via Powerline comes an extremely interesting article on one liberals attempts to understand the red states. Unlike the usual sneering contempt that many liberals exhibit, Lind actually takes a look at the demographics and ideologies of the red states and comes up with some interesting findings:
In any event, the quasi-Marxist assumption that voters merely seek to maximise their economic interests ignores the perennial importance of the politics of identity. There never was a time when working-class Americans voted for liberals whose values they rejected but whose economic programmes enticed them. Before the federal judiciary nationalised issues like abortion, gay rights and censorship, beginning in the 1960s, these controversies were part of state and local politics, not national politics. Conservative Catholics in the midwest or southern populists could vote for social conservatism in state and local elections, while voting for New Deal economic policies at the federal level. Thanks to federalism, New Deal liberals like Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson took positions on the economy and foreign policy; they did not have to take stands on abortion or gay rights. The very success of liberals in nationalising these issues has worked against them in a country in which self-described liberals are a minority, outnumbered by self-described moderates and conservatives.
I think what Lind hits on here is extremely interesting. The Democrats have succeeded on making social issues national issues – which alienates “values voters” from the Democratic Party. As Lind continues:
Even the most appealing economic programme cannot save American liberalism if it is associated with values that most Americans reject. Fortunately for the Democrats, most Americans are found in the political and moral centre, not on the far right. Bush’s Protestant fundamentalist constituents may despise the Enlightenment as the “Endarkenment,” but Bush and the Republicans won the election only by appealing to centrist Americans on the basis of their Enlightenment republican values.
Although it is weak in Britain and most European countries, small “r” republicanism is strong in Switzerland and still shapes France. The republican ideal is a citizen with enough property to be independent both of the labour market and of government. This explains why American populism, and much of the US labour movement, has been almost as hostile to the welfare state as it has been to unscrupulous employers. The continental European welfare state was devised in countries with traditions of bureaucratic monarchy and aristocratic paternalism, like Germany and Sweden. Americans have rejected the ideal of a society in which government pays for everything while a benevolent mandarinate governs in the public interest not because we are stupid, but because we are republicans.
Lind hits it exactly on the head, and this is probably one of the most insightful things I’ve ever heard from a liberal thinker. America has never flirted with socialism in the way that Europe has, nor is there nearly the redistributionist sentiment that there is in Europe. Part of this is because a good number of Europe’s rugged individualists ended up in America during the 19th and 20th Centuries. However, the cultural difference is key to understanding the why America and Europe are not at all alike in terms of political philosophy. America, never having been a monarchy and build a foundation of negative liberty, eschews the kind of bureaucratic paternalism that is endemic in Europe.
Lind continues with another brilliant observation:
When the Bush Republicans speak of “the ownership society,” they are tapping into common American values, not narrow conservative ideology. The most popular New Deal liberal programmes of the mid-20th century were those which diffused property or earning capability, like low-interest loans for people seeking to buy their own homes and loans for college students. Social security and Medicare – both redistributive systems – were carefully packaged by New Dealers as social insurance, to avoid offending republican populist sensibilities.
Indeed, Lind brushes on one of the primary reasons that the conservative ideology is undergoing a renaissance in America. The philosophies of the Democratic Party as it stands today run counter to traditional American values. The Democratic Party has embraced economic redistribution as one of their core values. The problem with this is that there’s nothing particularly moral about such a stand. Saying you’d do good with someone else’s money isn’t a morally brave statement.
The Democrats offer more and more government. Except when the average American considers their interactions with government — such as waiting in line at the DMV, the incredibly heartless bureaucracy of the IRS, or waiting at airport security checkpoints, their faith in government is understandably low. The Republicans argue that it is the American people that have the ability to do best for themselves and for their families. Given the choice between putting their faith in the heartless and often mindless machinery of government and being allowed to make choices for themselves, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which ideology is going to be more attractive for the typical American voter.
Lind continues:
Red-state America – inland, suburban and working-class – represents the future of the US, not the expensive, class-stratified coastal cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco. Conservatives, a minority among American voters, have managed to put together a majority coalition because they have learned to speak the populist language of the vast region between the Appalachians and the Rockies. Liberals can do so as well – but only if they stop sneering at the people they aspire to lead.
From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t see the Democrats being able to do this. The Democrats are not used to being a minority party, and they have a highly arrogant and insular attitude. Given that the red states have 286 electoral votes, the Democrats cannot afford to lose them again. Given that the demographic shifts are towards the red states, this trend is only going to get worse for them. But doing that would require them to radically alter their ideology to appeal to Middle America. The last major Democrat who could do that was Bill Clinton, and he did so by continually repudiating the left-most wing of the Democratic Party. Clinton signed NAFTA into law, ended up passing welfare reform, and publicly rebuked the rapper Sister Souljah. The current Democratic Party is dangerously out of touch with Middle America on a whole range of issues. As Lind quite correctly points out, until the Democrats can stop treating the 51% of the electorate who voted Republican (including 1 out of 10 of their own party), they will remain in the political wilderness. Accusing Bush voters of being too stupid to know what’s really good for them is certainly not the way to do it, and unless the Democrats can swallow their pride and do what Lind has done, they will remain a minority party. Then again, a party that treats the rest of the country with such contempt should not be allowed anywhere near power.
The current Democratic platform is identical to the platform of the Democrats during the Clinton era. Identical. Name one major domestic policy difference in John Kerry’s platform from Bill Clinton’s. The only difference I can think of is that Clinton wanted national health care, putting him to the LEFT of Kerry.
The Democrats are running as Republican-lite because Clinton made it work, even though Republican-lite is no longer selling Middle America where the Democrats lack of economic populism is there Achille’s heel. Yet even though the Democrats move further to the right every year, the right has still been able to sell this absurd notion that today’s Democrats are “the most liberal of all-time”. Other than rhetorical blather about “Marxist sympathizers”, however, you provide zero evidence to back it up. And for good reason given that the Democrats of today are well to the right of Republicans of previous generations on just about every meat-and-potatoes issue.
I read Lind’s piece this morning. It had its moments, but I think if he believes the Democratic Party can win over red-state voters by following the GOP handbook, he’s crazy. Even if the Democrats had nominated Lieberman this year, he would have, just like Kerry, graduated to “the most liberal candidate the Democratic Party has ever nominated.” When someone can run on a center-right platform like John Kerry and still be branded a “Marxist sympathizer” by the right-wing propaganda machine, it’s hopeless to try to appeal to voters persuaded by such drivel.
Clearly, the Republican Party isn’t winning based on their thoughtful view of history and how the world works. In the thread below, Chet and myself absolutely savaged you by comparing the historical and present-day successes of “blue” values and the comparative failure of red values. And your responses became increasingly emotional, breathlessly juvenile and self-defeating as you engaged in the very name-calling and opposition-baiting (those trashy black liberals and lower-class filth in DC and Detroit never learn!!!) that you accuse the left of doing at least 20 times a day.
The only reason you are winning is the culture war, and the Democratic should not (and politically, can not) embrace the values of people who believe two-thirds of their countrymen are doomed to spend the rest of eternity in hell. Even if the Democratic Party decides to give every red-state voter a free Uzi and throw in a homosexual for target practice in an attempt to win back West Virginia in 2008, we’ll still be hearing about how the Democratic Party has moved so damn far to the left since Bill Clinton (who you righties now love to portray as this sane and measured moderate after eight years of branding him V.I. Lenin’s late 20th century counterpart). I’m conceding that the American electorate is probably lost for the Democratic Party in the next 10 years. If the Democrats have to become complete clones of the GOP (they’re already 80% there) in order to win, what’s the point?
Unfortunately, I’m prepared to experience a substantial decline in my quality of life compared to that of my parents as a result of the new political alignment. Lind points out in the article that working people will suffer greatly under the GOP policies so many of them are embracing, and by the time they realize the error of their ways, will already be locked into a system battering them bloody which will be brutally difficult to reform. As much pain as it’s gonna require to get there, I’d prefer if the Democratic Party welcomed these people back crawling on their hands and knees after being proven woefully wrong than to follow Lind’s approach and reward their narrow-minded bigotry and avarice in the near-term by telling them “you’re right and we’re wrong.”
Kerry was substantially more protectionist than Clinton. Clinton, to his credit, was a strong supporter of international trade and was critical in forming the WTO.
If you have a problem with Kerry being called the most liberal Senator in America, take it up with The National Journal that ranked him so.
Kerry ran a campaign that was more incoherent than anything else. Liberman would probably be getting the drapes fitted for the Oval Office had the Democrats enough sense to have nominated him.
And so long as the Democrats keeping harping about the fictional “right-wing propaganda machine” they won’t win. It’s a pathetic cop-out. The media runs strongly liberal, and the standard Democratic excuse that the media is to blame for all of their losses is a petulant excuse.
No, you and “Chet” engaged in a series of mindless ad hominems with no supporting proof. You know those little bits of text? Those are called links that lead to things called sources. Saying something is true is an assertion, and assertions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink. When you can find credible sources to prove what you say, then maybe people would start taking you seriously. (Then of course, if you actually did some reading you’d find that most of your worldview is unsupportable and untrue).
Well, that’s fine. The rest of the country will have a decent life, but feel free to wallow in your own self pity for the next decade – of course, by then the class-warfare wing of the Democratic Party will continue to die off. Over half of this country are invested in the stock market. Fewer and fewer workers are unionized because they realize that unions are throughly corrupt and offer no benefits. Social issues aren’t going to go away.
Really, an honest Democrat would actually try to understand what went wrong rather than just blindly asserting their moral superiority and insulting anyone who doesn’t agree. Then again, it appears as though honest Democrats are rapidly becoming an endangered species.
I’m heading off for four days and may not see a response to this question/statement but have to make a few points anyway:
“Kerry was substantially more protectionist than Clinton.”
He wanted to end tax breaks to companies that moved overseas (hardly out of the mainstream….something only Friedman stooges could love) and didn’t have any interestin signing on for MORE trade agreements beyond the litany of current agreements we’re engaged in, none of which he advocated repealing. If this position qualifies Kerry as that much more of a leftist than Bill Clinton, then the country at large would have to be described as left of Clinton. Support for expanding free trade is quite scarce these days. You’re gonna have a hard-time successfully arguing that the caricature of Kerry as a “lunatic liberal out of touch with the mainstream” was based on his trade platform. If anything, Kerry was too LITTLE of a protectionist for the American mainstream and probably would have picked up hundreds of thousands of votes if he advocated the repeal of NAFTA.
The National Journal themselves had a problem with the manipulation of their ranking by Republican operatives. Given that you, like John Kerry, opposed the expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drugs, you would have been branded as voting the “liberal” side of that issue had you been in Congress. To my understanding, only 14 other votes were accounted for in that ranking. Of course, you’re fully aware that John Kerry is not “the most liberal Senator in America”, but the fact that you still choose to play that erroneous card one sentence before denying the existence of a right-wing propaganda machine is laughable hypocrisy even by your clunky standards.
In the debate on blue values and red values below, any rational observer would qualify you as the one tossing out ad hominems, doling out the usual “how dare you!” petulance over and over about how us “elitists” look down our noses at red states right before lashing out as those dumbass darkies in Detroit and DC who don’t vote for your party. It’s well documented that blue Minnesota and blue Switzerland are considered to have the highest quality-of-life among their respective peers. I may have not spent a half hour cutting and pasting links to show that to you, but I guess you can choose ignorance to those facts if you like. Likewise, I didn’t see much in the way of facts to back up your assessment that those “dumb-ass black liberals” in Detroit and DC are worse off than Houston, Phoenix or any urban center to their political right.
Interesting how you go on to laugh at union workers when at least a third of union workers voted for your party (suicidally). Apparently you believe that because you have a 51% majority, you can piss on the members of your own constituency that don’t toe the exact same line you do. In your incessant lashes at me and liberals who bash red state voters, are you really so blinded by ideology that you can’t see you’re doing the same thing when you talk about the “corrupt unions” that helped get your man elected.
With that said, Merry Christmas. And I mean that. 😀
f you have a problem with Kerry being called the most liberal Senator in America, take it up with The National Journal that ranked him so.
Actually, they didn’t. All in all he’s only the 11th most liberal American senator, according to the National Journal.
Oh, I know Bush told you that the National Journal said that they did, but he was lying. You can look it up at fackcheck.org, remember?
Those are called links that lead to things called sources.
I gave you three sources from primary literature, remember? The only one who employed ad hominem in place of argument was you.
Kerry was ranked as the most liberal Senator four times in his career, in 1986, 1988, 1990, and 2003. The National Journal did rank Kerry the most liberal in 2003 just as the Bush campaign stated.
And any posts that consist of childish ad hominem attacks will be deleted. Keep it civil or leave.
Clinton was successful for two reasons. First, he coopted much of the conservative agenda. The above mentioned leftists emote they would rather suffer economic catastrophy than give up their baby killing or homocentric health hazards. So they won’t do that.
Secondly, Clinton was a superb liar! He could believably sound like a Christian or a Satanist, a free market conservative or a pinko solcialist, depending on the audiance. This will be the tack of the left and they aren’t very good at lieing or disquising their hate. This clearly bodes well for America, both economically and morally. A moral nation is rewarded. The immoral are the enemies of the Lord.
And any posts that consist of childish ad hominem attacks will be deleted.
I notice that policy doesn’t apply to conservative posters, like RA in the previous post.