I'm watching the balance of power wobble along (Boo, Rand Paul! Yay, Andrew Cuomo!) and have some special interest in local and state initiatives (Boo, Prop D! Yay, Prop 19!), but otherwise don't have much invested in the outcome.
The course for the next generation was set back in 2008, when the Stevensonian elite subverted their own party's electoral process (Be a Democrat for a Day!) so that they could feel morally superior voting for a black man. Obama himself has said quite clearly that no one would bother to vote for him if he was white. This says much of his political calculation, but even more of his supporters. They were truly the Joshua Generation, unwilling to do more than their political predecessors and envious that they could not be cultural heroes like the economic giants of FDR's era or the moral giants of MLK's. And, having aimed so low and compromised so much so they could pretend to stand up to the "racists", they now get to live with that legacy. Unfortunately, so do the rest of us.
Showing posts with label Racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Racism. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Of Reds, Racists and Rubes
One of the reasons I don't blog much anymore is that I said most of what I had to say between November of 2007 and the election the following November, when the general ideas I had about the state of the liberal mind in America came to life before my very eyes. Those 480 posts were me theorizing out loud. The over-arching theme was the fault line within the Democratic Party (which I had been haphazardly posting about since the previous electoral cycle in 2006, when the Lieberman debacle started to expose the fissure) that has only widened.
Accusations of racism, obsession with reducing political opponents to racists, and a reflexive lunge for racism as the true root of opposition to the Obama administration/ health care/organic produce/ insert issue of the week here looks and sounds like nothing so much as the Red-baiting tactics of McCarthy and Nixon back in the day. Just as that obsession (revived today under the "Socialist! epithet being attached to someone whose policies are well to the right of Tricky Dick's) had roots in both the pre-New Deal strength of labor and the danger of the "Commie" Russians and Chinese (usually confounded with the fascist Nazis), so, too, does the racism obsession have it's roots in slavery and segregation. As I discussed in The Whiteness of the Whale, reversal of the Democratic Party's traditional defense of racism became the defining characteristic of the party after Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act Act (about which LBJ said "I know the risks are great and we might lose the South, but those sorts of states may be lost anyway.").
As with the Right's use of anti-Communism, the Left's use of racism as a political trope to delegitimize opponents (to be distinguished from battling actual racism, which would entail relinquishing the historical privilege those liberal elites enjoy, just as actually abiding by true capitalist/free market ideology would wipe out the "socialism for the rich" advantages of the Right's elite) is sounding more like the crazy uncle than describing any reality I can observe.
Accusations of racism, obsession with reducing political opponents to racists, and a reflexive lunge for racism as the true root of opposition to the Obama administration/ health care/organic produce/ insert issue of the week here looks and sounds like nothing so much as the Red-baiting tactics of McCarthy and Nixon back in the day. Just as that obsession (revived today under the "Socialist! epithet being attached to someone whose policies are well to the right of Tricky Dick's) had roots in both the pre-New Deal strength of labor and the danger of the "Commie" Russians and Chinese (usually confounded with the fascist Nazis), so, too, does the racism obsession have it's roots in slavery and segregation. As I discussed in The Whiteness of the Whale, reversal of the Democratic Party's traditional defense of racism became the defining characteristic of the party after Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act Act (about which LBJ said "I know the risks are great and we might lose the South, but those sorts of states may be lost anyway.").As with the Right's use of anti-Communism, the Left's use of racism as a political trope to delegitimize opponents (to be distinguished from battling actual racism, which would entail relinquishing the historical privilege those liberal elites enjoy, just as actually abiding by true capitalist/free market ideology would wipe out the "socialism for the rich" advantages of the Right's elite) is sounding more like the crazy uncle than describing any reality I can observe.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Why the Southern Strategy Works
More on my continual thinking about "The South" in the American political imagination.
The bruhaha over Pres. Carter's claim that opposition to The Precious is rooted in racism makes me reflect back on the primary campaigns when that was the standard response to anyone on the left who voiced criticism or opposition to Obama - or who merely said they preferred a different candidate.
The interesting political question for me, however, is not that the idiocy of the campaign is coming back to bite The Precious Administration in the ass, but why the Democratic response to opposition time and again (and not just by Obamacans) is to point out the imagined moral/ethical failings of the opponents on the subject of race, rather than make a political argument about the weakness of opposition's stances or identify the failures of the previous administrations, etc. The response also fails to distinguish between the sources of opposition - criticisms coming from the anti-D/democratic side and opposition from inside the party. The problem here is not that this racism claim is being pushed forward in a cynical way, but that it is what the speakers really believe.
I'm going to make a claim - Pres. Carter was sincere when he asserted that opposition to Obama was based in racism. This was not a calculated use of an argument to fluster opponents, but what Carter believes to be true. This is a politician for whom opposition to racism was his motivation and organizing principle. He is paradigmatic of a certain kind of Democrat for whom racism is the prism through which politics is viewed, unable or unwilling to put that particular battle into its constituent role in liberal politics as such.
As I detailed in The Whiteness of the Whale:
But here is the irony - the moralistic and non-political use of racism as a shaming mechanism by party leaders in combination with the passionate rejection of "white trash" (the working class) by those same leaders has made the Republicans' political strategy just that much more effective. We're doing their work for them. Instead of policies, like universal health care, that materially improve the lives of people in their current socio-economic location, there are half-assed half-measures that tie provision of common social goods to obtaining stable, high-paying, white-collar career employment. Sure, if you are one of the "creative class" types who provides a service the people with the money consider important, you, too, can have the perks that make life comfortable. If you don't choose to improve yourself (Organic food! More exercise! Fewer children! Higher education! Better dental hygiene!), then you don't deserve a better life. If you don't like the policies being proposed, well, you're probably just a racist who doesn't want benefits going to "those people."
That's a moralistic argument, not a political one. It offers an insult where there should be a promise of material goods. When people voice, however awkwardly, fears and resentment about being treated unfairly by social and political institutions, their discontent is dismissed as individual failings (clinging to guns and God) instead of organizing that discontent into a movement against the real sources of racism - entrenched economic elites who interests are anti-D/democratic.
The Southern Strategy has become the de facto operating principle of the Democratic Party. Divide the working class on racial lines and designate these groups as deserving and undeserving. Focus on individual failings rather than the deep structures of power. Make people pick tribes.
Paul Krugman, in The Conscience of a Liberal, methodically dissected the use of race by the Right to undermine the advances of the New Deal. When he expresses amazement that "zombie" ideas of the Movement Conservatives just keep resurrecting themselves no matter how badly they fail, he overlooks the way in which the use of race by the Left has also undermined the advances of the New Deal. The economic claims of the Right have staying power because their social claims are confirmed by the actions of the Left. The 2008 campaign was breathtaking in the way it laid bare these fault lines on the Left, presenting the ideologies in their pure form, unmoored from any supporting reality. It was an incredible display of contempt for people living on the edge.
Racism is the hueristic of the Stevensonian elite. These people keep the Southern Strategy going to the detriment of us all.
Anglachel
PS - Right after I posted this, I saw Historiann's excellent post Race and Barack Obama’s political opposition. Go read it. Now. It's good.
The bruhaha over Pres. Carter's claim that opposition to The Precious is rooted in racism makes me reflect back on the primary campaigns when that was the standard response to anyone on the left who voiced criticism or opposition to Obama - or who merely said they preferred a different candidate.
The interesting political question for me, however, is not that the idiocy of the campaign is coming back to bite The Precious Administration in the ass, but why the Democratic response to opposition time and again (and not just by Obamacans) is to point out the imagined moral/ethical failings of the opponents on the subject of race, rather than make a political argument about the weakness of opposition's stances or identify the failures of the previous administrations, etc. The response also fails to distinguish between the sources of opposition - criticisms coming from the anti-D/democratic side and opposition from inside the party. The problem here is not that this racism claim is being pushed forward in a cynical way, but that it is what the speakers really believe.
I'm going to make a claim - Pres. Carter was sincere when he asserted that opposition to Obama was based in racism. This was not a calculated use of an argument to fluster opponents, but what Carter believes to be true. This is a politician for whom opposition to racism was his motivation and organizing principle. He is paradigmatic of a certain kind of Democrat for whom racism is the prism through which politics is viewed, unable or unwilling to put that particular battle into its constituent role in liberal politics as such.
As I detailed in The Whiteness of the Whale:
I add to this that it wasn't just Northeast elites, but also down-in-the-trenches Southern Democrats, like Jimmy Carter, who had lived in the worst areas of America's apartheid and who understood just how inhuman Jim Crow was, who made the battle against racism the crown of liberal politics. Institutionalized racism had to be dismantled becuase there was no defense for it. Pres. Carter is not wrong when he emphasizes the corrosive effects of racism on the body politic; it is clearly the weapon of choice on the Right to undermine Democrats. The "Southern Strategy" continues to this day, though it could probably be renamed the "Sunbelt Strategy" to take cognizance of the anti-Latino theme.Why this psychotic and self-defeating projection onto the working class? It is the deep guilt of the liberal upper class that we know, every last miserable one of us, that our privilege is due to centuries of white supremacy and to the informal, unspoken, but pervasive advantage our skin color and behavioral patterns gives us in this society. It is our Moby Dick, the whale we pursue obsessively through political seas, frantic to have material proof that we are innocent of the crimes of our nation.
The Democratic Party was the party of slavery and civil war in the 19th century. It was the party of Jim Crow in the early 20th century. The New Deal set it on the path to renouncing that legacy through the mid-part of the last century, and it was a brutal passage. Instead of reimagining the South and what it could become, the Northeast elite who had taken over the leadership simply renounced it – you will be like us or you can get out. When desegregation came to the Northeast and the Midwest, the contempt for “The South” was transferred easily to the working class ethnic whites who resisted this change. Archie Bunker became an eternal truth rather than a thought exercise, a denunciation of the unchangeable cretin in front of the TV instead of a call to reflect on how we become what we are and how, despite ourselves, we can find our common humanity. Most of all, the determined demonization of working class whites, especially those with Southern connections, allows the upper class elites to turn a blind eye to the way in which they are the biggest beneficiaries of the centuries of racism in the nation. There is a growing group within the liberal elite who wishes to jettison “The South” entirely, leaving the working class immiserated and isolated, rather than face up to the obligation of the party to complete the task before it. That task is to create the conditions under which racism is no longer something that can be exploited for electoral gain or needed as a survival tactic in deteriorating and demeaning socio-economic conditions.
But here is the irony - the moralistic and non-political use of racism as a shaming mechanism by party leaders in combination with the passionate rejection of "white trash" (the working class) by those same leaders has made the Republicans' political strategy just that much more effective. We're doing their work for them. Instead of policies, like universal health care, that materially improve the lives of people in their current socio-economic location, there are half-assed half-measures that tie provision of common social goods to obtaining stable, high-paying, white-collar career employment. Sure, if you are one of the "creative class" types who provides a service the people with the money consider important, you, too, can have the perks that make life comfortable. If you don't choose to improve yourself (Organic food! More exercise! Fewer children! Higher education! Better dental hygiene!), then you don't deserve a better life. If you don't like the policies being proposed, well, you're probably just a racist who doesn't want benefits going to "those people."
That's a moralistic argument, not a political one. It offers an insult where there should be a promise of material goods. When people voice, however awkwardly, fears and resentment about being treated unfairly by social and political institutions, their discontent is dismissed as individual failings (clinging to guns and God) instead of organizing that discontent into a movement against the real sources of racism - entrenched economic elites who interests are anti-D/democratic.
The Southern Strategy has become the de facto operating principle of the Democratic Party. Divide the working class on racial lines and designate these groups as deserving and undeserving. Focus on individual failings rather than the deep structures of power. Make people pick tribes.
Paul Krugman, in The Conscience of a Liberal, methodically dissected the use of race by the Right to undermine the advances of the New Deal. When he expresses amazement that "zombie" ideas of the Movement Conservatives just keep resurrecting themselves no matter how badly they fail, he overlooks the way in which the use of race by the Left has also undermined the advances of the New Deal. The economic claims of the Right have staying power because their social claims are confirmed by the actions of the Left. The 2008 campaign was breathtaking in the way it laid bare these fault lines on the Left, presenting the ideologies in their pure form, unmoored from any supporting reality. It was an incredible display of contempt for people living on the edge.
Racism is the hueristic of the Stevensonian elite. These people keep the Southern Strategy going to the detriment of us all.
Anglachel
PS - Right after I posted this, I saw Historiann's excellent post Race and Barack Obama’s political opposition. Go read it. Now. It's good.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Private Matters
Some of my readers (and not just the published commenters) seem confused by discussion of public, private and the excusable when analyzing misogyny.
Right on cue, the AP reports today about a pair of white supremacists who intended to murder African American students and also try to kill Obama. The media frenzy is about the stated threat to Obama, while Damon on Corrente goes to the real problem, which is that the plot to murder people on account of race was the primary motivation: "To me, the main part of the story is the murderous rampage planned against a bunch of innocents folks based on nothing other than their color".
I'm going to focus on the planned school attacks not to minimize what the perpetrators wanted to do, but to emphasize a point I have been making about the privatized nature of misogyny compared to racism. As an aside to the total nut cases who have been innundating my comments and email: A) discussing the lack of attention given to misogyny in no way minimizes racist violence and B) providing a critical view of racism alongside of a critical view of misogyny is not excusing race-baiting against HRC during the primaries, or to minimize the misogynystic attacks on her or Gov. Palin. Smarter trolls, please.
What I want to point to first is the very serious and responsible actions of the ATF to the plot. That these racists did not appear capable of actually carrying out the full horrors of their plot against their initial targets (they evidently confessed to having fired at least one gun at an unoccupied AA church in the recent past) is not much of a concern - to have caused injury well short of death to a single person is reason for revulsion and condemnation. We look at it and can agree without equivocation that this plan was racist and inexcusable. Unlike the two school attacks, on the Amish school and on the Colorado high school, I have referenced before there is no doubt that these men were singling out a class of people without regard to anything specific to those people except a demographic marker - race. We are not confused by any personal histories of the would-be murderers or particularly interested in their motivations. We can see bigotry based on a class in a way we can't or won't see it when groups of women are murdered, or even threatened with violence short of murder.
There is another quality to the foiled plot that needs attention. Racial violence is conducted publically and (though not clearly present in this example) institutionally with state-controlled means of violence and coercion. Strangers seek out racial groups for assault and murder. Institutionally, we see patterns of actions that disproportionately punish non-white groups - "driving while black", the staggering incarceration rate of young black men, the different penalties handed out to different drug users, and so forth. This is violence inflicted in the street and with an audience.
As discussed in the previous posts, violence against women is disproportionately a crime performed within a private space - a home, a car in a secluded place, a locked dorm room, a professional office. The assailants are not usually strangers to us, but family members and friends. The privacy makes it difficult to measure the scope and scale, easy to reduce it to expressions of antipathy between particular individuals or of the psychopathy of the assailant, and extremely difficult to prosecute because of the intimacy and dependence between the assailant and the victim. The institutions of civil society, divided into feminine and masculine space, home and work, emotion and economics, provide constant, unmonitored, unremarkable access to the subjugated class.
This has also been the condition of racial violence in this country, of course, where slaveholders claimed to be acting as paternal authorities over the people attached (willingly or not) to their household. It was the physical and sexual subjugation of people who could not escape and who were, as time and generations went by, the kin of the abusers. America's apartheid, Jim Crow, was defended on the grounds that it was a private matter that outsiders should not interfere with, the paternalistic, patriarchal model of violent control extended to the community. It lingers on in arguments about "state's rights" or the power to systematically treat classes of people as the proper subjects of private violence and coercion.
Another aspect of the public/private which is counter intuitive is that misogyny does not need to hide itself in public, which is why I call it excusable. It is permissable to describe women as their body parts, to have magazines dedicated to demeaning sexualized portrayals of women, to harass, to graphically describe the sexual violence you want to inflict on a particular female as punishment for some real or imagined failing of hers, etc. We can talk violently and derogatorily about women in public venues in every corner of this country, in every socio-economic group, in every place of discourse from high brow to the gutter in a way that is not acceptable to speak about racial and ethnic groups. Ironically enough, to the degree that Obama was unfairly treated by The Village, the language used sought to feminize him, to make him appear weak, unmasculine, vain, girly, "Obambi" in Maureen Dowd's all-too self-revealing terminology. The worst thing she could think to call him was a girl.
To the degree that the society accepts as normal the use of private violence and coercion against a class of people, you will see public expressions of that violence tolerated, even promulgated, without irony or shame. Olbermann can trash women as such, something that the Incomparable Bob Somerby has noticed about Olbermann in the past.
Two of my favorite bloggers also bring up the public/private split in recent posts, one on race and another on gender disparity in pay. French Doc of The Global Sociology Blog posted a cartoon "Of The Invisibility of Social Privilege and Institutional Racism" that could just as easily be used to describe male privilege. She notes:
Right on cue, the AP reports today about a pair of white supremacists who intended to murder African American students and also try to kill Obama. The media frenzy is about the stated threat to Obama, while Damon on Corrente goes to the real problem, which is that the plot to murder people on account of race was the primary motivation: "To me, the main part of the story is the murderous rampage planned against a bunch of innocents folks based on nothing other than their color".
I'm going to focus on the planned school attacks not to minimize what the perpetrators wanted to do, but to emphasize a point I have been making about the privatized nature of misogyny compared to racism. As an aside to the total nut cases who have been innundating my comments and email: A) discussing the lack of attention given to misogyny in no way minimizes racist violence and B) providing a critical view of racism alongside of a critical view of misogyny is not excusing race-baiting against HRC during the primaries, or to minimize the misogynystic attacks on her or Gov. Palin. Smarter trolls, please.
What I want to point to first is the very serious and responsible actions of the ATF to the plot. That these racists did not appear capable of actually carrying out the full horrors of their plot against their initial targets (they evidently confessed to having fired at least one gun at an unoccupied AA church in the recent past) is not much of a concern - to have caused injury well short of death to a single person is reason for revulsion and condemnation. We look at it and can agree without equivocation that this plan was racist and inexcusable. Unlike the two school attacks, on the Amish school and on the Colorado high school, I have referenced before there is no doubt that these men were singling out a class of people without regard to anything specific to those people except a demographic marker - race. We are not confused by any personal histories of the would-be murderers or particularly interested in their motivations. We can see bigotry based on a class in a way we can't or won't see it when groups of women are murdered, or even threatened with violence short of murder.
There is another quality to the foiled plot that needs attention. Racial violence is conducted publically and (though not clearly present in this example) institutionally with state-controlled means of violence and coercion. Strangers seek out racial groups for assault and murder. Institutionally, we see patterns of actions that disproportionately punish non-white groups - "driving while black", the staggering incarceration rate of young black men, the different penalties handed out to different drug users, and so forth. This is violence inflicted in the street and with an audience.
As discussed in the previous posts, violence against women is disproportionately a crime performed within a private space - a home, a car in a secluded place, a locked dorm room, a professional office. The assailants are not usually strangers to us, but family members and friends. The privacy makes it difficult to measure the scope and scale, easy to reduce it to expressions of antipathy between particular individuals or of the psychopathy of the assailant, and extremely difficult to prosecute because of the intimacy and dependence between the assailant and the victim. The institutions of civil society, divided into feminine and masculine space, home and work, emotion and economics, provide constant, unmonitored, unremarkable access to the subjugated class.
This has also been the condition of racial violence in this country, of course, where slaveholders claimed to be acting as paternal authorities over the people attached (willingly or not) to their household. It was the physical and sexual subjugation of people who could not escape and who were, as time and generations went by, the kin of the abusers. America's apartheid, Jim Crow, was defended on the grounds that it was a private matter that outsiders should not interfere with, the paternalistic, patriarchal model of violent control extended to the community. It lingers on in arguments about "state's rights" or the power to systematically treat classes of people as the proper subjects of private violence and coercion.
Another aspect of the public/private which is counter intuitive is that misogyny does not need to hide itself in public, which is why I call it excusable. It is permissable to describe women as their body parts, to have magazines dedicated to demeaning sexualized portrayals of women, to harass, to graphically describe the sexual violence you want to inflict on a particular female as punishment for some real or imagined failing of hers, etc. We can talk violently and derogatorily about women in public venues in every corner of this country, in every socio-economic group, in every place of discourse from high brow to the gutter in a way that is not acceptable to speak about racial and ethnic groups. Ironically enough, to the degree that Obama was unfairly treated by The Village, the language used sought to feminize him, to make him appear weak, unmasculine, vain, girly, "Obambi" in Maureen Dowd's all-too self-revealing terminology. The worst thing she could think to call him was a girl.
To the degree that the society accepts as normal the use of private violence and coercion against a class of people, you will see public expressions of that violence tolerated, even promulgated, without irony or shame. Olbermann can trash women as such, something that the Incomparable Bob Somerby has noticed about Olbermann in the past.
Two of my favorite bloggers also bring up the public/private split in recent posts, one on race and another on gender disparity in pay. French Doc of The Global Sociology Blog posted a cartoon "Of The Invisibility of Social Privilege and Institutional Racism" that could just as easily be used to describe male privilege. She notes:
This should be mandatory material for any introduction to sociology course to explain the simple yet often hard to understand for our students fact that we do not all experience the social structure and interact with its social institutions in a similar fashion. ...
Moreover, social disadvantages and privileges are invisible, especially for the dominant categories (and sometimes even to the disadvantaged who might buy into the dominant ideology). That society is overall experienced as more structurally and interpersonally violent for the disadvantaged is a greatly under-discussed social fact that contributes to the reproduction of these forms of violence.
The violence against women is reinforced by structures of habitation and the acceptance of a level of violent language and imagery that would be unsustainable for any other class of people. Ann of Historiann has a post Who’s your daddy? that looks at the pay disparity in law firms, and that women are consistently paid less, even when they are married and have children and, at least objectively, have as great a need to provide economic support to their household. Married women with children earn the least, which is another informal structure of society that makes them vulnerable to coersion and violence in the home - low pay and pressure to not work increases vulnerability and also increases the relative advantage of all males, not just those who woud use violence. To my mind, the increasing reluctance of the men on the Left to spend political capital fighting for contraceptive rights has a great deal to do with wanting to reduce the competition. If I'm smart enough to get this connection, so are they.
Back in my grad school days in NYC, the spousal unit and I lived in a walkup in Little Italy. In the apartment above us was a couple who argued and scuffled. The woman was good friends with another woman on our floor. One night, we were brought bolt awake by the sound of the upstairs woman screaming and of things crashing. We scrambled to pull on our clothes, and the SU tried to find a stick or club. The woman downstairs was calling the cops and screaming up the stairwell for the guy to stop beating the other woman. The upstairs apartment door crashed open (big, heavy metal doors) and the woman being attacked ran downstairs to her friend's apartment, slamming the door shut before the boyfriend could get her. He spent the next 15 minutes pounding on the door screaming at them both. The cops showed up and did the arrest just outside our door. After the Miranda Rights, it kinda went like this:
COP: (Conversational, almost cheerful tone) So, why'd ya go beatin' your girl?
BF: (slurred voice) I din't!
COP: But she said ya did. Look, that's blood there. Need a closer look? (sounds of scuffle)
BF: I din't do nuthin'!
COP: Ya broke her nose, asshole.
BF: I din't hurt her!
COP: Ya didn't hurt her, huh? Well, tell ya what. How's about I take this here flashlight an' I smash in your nose? Whadda ya tink? Tink it would hurt?
Ah, rhetorical questions from New York's Finest. They dragged the guy off about then so we didn't get to find out of the boyfriend took the cop up on the offer. Two things have stayed with me about the exchange. First is the cop, who obviously didn't like this abuser, discussing the woman as a belonging and in a diminutive - your girl. The second is the insistence by the guy that he had not done anything, he had not inflicted harm. I think he meant it, that he didn't think what he had done to her constituted harm. Actually, there was a third thing I remember. It is Franca, the maintenance woman, on her knees on the stone steps the next day, scrubbing away the blood. It was spattered on the walls, the stairs and the floor.
Domestic violence, the systematic infliction of violence and threats of violence on household members, may be privatized, but it is not private, which is to say that it is not simply an altercation between two individuals but is a relationship of power that the society chooses to maintain as normal, natural, and outside anyone's ability to address because it's a "family matter". Just like chattel slavery used to be. Violent acts are performed by a significant minority of men for the simple reason that they know they will probably get away with it, but those acts in turn take place in a milieu where contemptuous degradation of women is as common as the nearest Hooters restaurant or the pharmacist who won't fill birth control prescriptions. Why wouldn't they think they can get away with it when the majority of men give no indication that they have any interest in changing the terms of the interactions?
I'm back to my original question to the men - who are you? Don't bother to tell me about what a great guy you are or how offended you are that I would compare you to those bastards who beat and rape. Anyone can appear sincere online. Since I don't know any of you in person, I have no way to know whether your words and your deeds coincide. Only you know if you are making excuses for not standing up and excercising the 1st Amendmant rights you hold so sacred for those who want to spew murderous misogynystic crap, and doing so on behalf of those who have to live on the receiving end of that violence. A system that promulgates misogyny also keeps intact the structures that engender classicm, racism and homophobia.
You can excuse yourself, or you can do the right thing.
Anglachel
PS - I look up from my blogging and see this posted by Echidne, Modern Day Sex Slavery. Someone is buying the use of these children, in enough volume that it is worth risking arrest to run these operations. I read this post and all I want to know is who is visiting these brothels and handing over dough to fuck barely pubescent girls?
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sullied
The Incomparable Bob Somerby is one of the very few voices in Left Blogistan who rejects all truthiness and is willing to turn his criticism on his fellow bloggers for their unseemly desire to move out of remote blogospheric hamlets and into The Village. His take down today of Josh Marshall (no more jokes about who kidnapped him) is a thing of beauty, "Will someone stop Josh Marshall before he defends Bush again?"
Somerby reviews Josh's bizarre insistence that John McCain's campaign is worse than anything seen in American politics in 35 years, including Marshall's casual defense of both Bushes' excrable campaigns. I think Somerby misses a small point, that Marshall is not thinking of Nixon as the worst campaign, but of George Wallace. Why? Because it fits with the meta-narrative of dividing the electoral world into racists and non-racists, instead of into conservatives and liberals, or Republicans and Democrats, or some other issue-based form of political categorization.
Key Somerby quotes (but read the whole thing, it is powerful):
Somerby reviews Josh's bizarre insistence that John McCain's campaign is worse than anything seen in American politics in 35 years, including Marshall's casual defense of both Bushes' excrable campaigns. I think Somerby misses a small point, that Marshall is not thinking of Nixon as the worst campaign, but of George Wallace. Why? Because it fits with the meta-narrative of dividing the electoral world into racists and non-racists, instead of into conservatives and liberals, or Republicans and Democrats, or some other issue-based form of political categorization.
Key Somerby quotes (but read the whole thing, it is powerful):
Here’s the rest of Josh’s original post—a post which helps define the broken soul of emerging “progressive” culture: [long cite of how the Bushes weren't involved in the Willie Horton or the Swift Boat Veterans smears.] That concluded Josh’s original post. It’s why this guy has to go.
First, it’s astounding to see the way Josh keeps defending the campaign of George Bush the elder. We know, we know—within the framework of the Village, this sort of thing makes you a Serious Person. But is there no end to the insults we must endure from these transparent strivers? ... Josh may be too young to remember these things; he may be too dumb to have read about them. But with his repeated defenses of Bush the elder, he is misinforming a whole generation of younger readers. We know! We know! Within the Village, this sort of thing makes you a Serious Person. But it’s time for this bullsh*t to stop. ...
Is the current campaign “the most dishonest” of the past 35 years? For a liberal or a Democrat, it’s insane to address that question without discussing the twenty-month War Against Gore—and yes, Josh understands that fact (link below). But Josh is making himself a career—and he’s willing to disinform you to do it. Within the Village, you become a Very Serious Person by disappearing what the Villagers did for twenty straight months during Campaign 2000. Josh understand that history well—and he knows enough not to discuss it. ...
Josh has played for you for many years on this score. In the process, he is emerging as the Sully of the pseudo-left. It’s long past time for this weird, creepy man to pack his satchel and go. At any rate, will someone please stop poor Josh Marshall before he boo-hoos, blubbers and cries defending Bush the elder again? Josh! George Bush 41 ran a scuzzball campaign! It was the start of modern GOP campaign culture. Our advice: Go away and grow some stones. Come back when you’re ready to say it. ...
[Cite of Josh repeating lies form Drudge] Good God! To this day, Josh continues to air that highlighted claim, which originally came from Drudge—a claim whose absurdity became clear within about ten minutes. (As an adept of The Cult of the Offhand Comment, Josh is also eager to throw in the "hard-working, white" quote.)Hasn’t the public suffered enough from the actual Andrew Sullivan? Defending Bush, avoiding Campaign 2000, Josh makes himself a Serious Person. But you can’t build a progressive politics by respecting the need of people like this to shape-shift the recent past.
I don't think Somerby is wrong on any of these counts, I would simply push him further. He keeps hinting at it when he talks about the broken soul of emerging "progressive" culture, insults from transparent strivers, the frantic desire to become a Very Serious Person, the pseudo-left (a phrase Somerby has been using for several days), shape-shifting the recent past, and so forth. His focus is on the blogosphere and the straightforward lies of people like Marshall, Yglesias, Markos, Kevin Drum, Hamsher, Huffington, Atrios, Steve Benen, and Digby, the people who started exactly in the same place as Somerby (well, not Arianna) and who all of them, every last lying scumbag one, found out that the way to get invited onto TV, interviewed in big name news papers, sucked up to by political campaigns, was to join in the defamation of the Clinton/Gore administration.
It is more important to this group of the wanna-be punditocracy to be seen beating up that administration than to be critical of any Republican one. As we have seen over the last year, it is also more important to the Unity Democrats to defame these people than to actually unify the party into an electoral super-majority. It is this fact that Somerby criticizes by proxy in his contempt for Marshall and for the forces arrayed against Gore. He presents the media lies to expose the political lies.
To me, as I have been writing for months, the key lies with the psychosis of the Stevensonian crowd, who hate all things white and southern and who have seized the presence of racism (real and imagined) as the source of evil in the body politic. No lie is too much, no threat of violence too far, no manipulation of the process too crude in the Battle Against the Bubbas.
This is why we have the weird opposition to McCain and Palin, almost identical to the trashing of Hillary, focusing on racism and social status to the exclusion of substance. It can work if you have already decided that the poor and working class as such are not worthy of political representation. Exactly in the way that the Republicans have tried to make urban black populations stand in for everyone below upper middle class, trying to sully programs for lower classes by forcing programs benefitting those classes into grotesque blackface, now the Democrats are coming at this group from the other side, whitewashing their own class bigotry with the specter of the KKK.
Before Somerby guts, skewers and shish-kebabs Marshall, he nails Richard Cohen on Cohen's incoherent bloviating:
But why should anyone pay attention to anything Richard Cohen says? Having left the Republican Party for dead, this is the way he describes the modern Democratic Party:
COHEN (10/21/08): Ah, I know, the blues are not all virtuous. They are supine before self-serving unions, particularly in education, and they are knee-jerk opponents of offshore drilling, mostly, it seems, because they don't like Big Oil. They cannot face the challenge of the Third World within us—the ghetto with its appalling social and cultural ills—lest realism be called racism. Sometimes, too, they seem to criticize American foreign policy simply because it is American.
Still, a Democrat can remain a Democrat—or at least vote as one—without compromising basic intellectual or cultural values.
Talk about the lesser of two evils! According to Cohen, Democrats refuse to stand up to the teacher unions and indulge in irrational hatred of big corporations. They don’t have the guts to stand up to “the ghetto”—our own “Third World within.” And of course, they sometimes “seem to criticize American foreign policy simply because it is American.” This is an astounding portrait. And yet, despite these astonishing flaws, a person can be a Dem today “without compromising basic intellectual or cultural values!”
Look at who Cohen goes after - environmentalists, unions, black (ghetto) poor, and critics of American hegemonic power. Hmm, sounds like he doesn't like liberals. Sounds like he equates being against those things with being a real Democrat, calling people who want unionization (defense of working class) and policies to alleviate poverty (refusing to pathologize urban blacks or rural whites), protection of the environment and development of renewable energy (defense of life itself), and object to smacking around small countries (diplomacy, not bombs and assassinations) lacking in intellectual power and cultural values. Praising Reagan? Excusing the Bushes? That's all good.
Bob has it right. What this last political year shows us is how the Unity Democrats have Sullied liberalism.
Anglachel
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Ambiguous Conversations
Anthony McCarthy has a post up on Echidne of the Snakes that is well worth reading, The Suppression Of Clearly Bigoted Words Is A Necessary Step. What he proposes is very straightforward - when anyone uses bigoted derogatory language towards individuals and/or classes of people or that perpetuates bigotry and derogatory treatment of a class of people, harass the living hell out of them until they stop doing it:
Achieving the suppression of the language of bigotry is straight forward, you suppress it. You make the use of the words uncomfortable and an invitation to be hassled. For example, the blog boys use the word “cunt”. The way to make them uncomfortable is to constantly call them on it when they use it. It’s simple as that. They refer to women in that way, you make that uncomfortable for them, you harass them whenever they say it. You make it not worth their wile to use the word. When they whine about your calling them on it, you just do it anyway. They pout about you ruining their fun and boy bonding, you ignore it and keep calling them on it while taking pleasure at their discomfort. Their discomfort is a sign your plan is working, I see nothing wrong with enjoying it, privately. Of course, you've got to give up using language like that yourself, you've got to have credibility.
I fully concur.
There is no liberal cause that is advanced by using bigoted and derogatory language. Nailing someone for using this kind of language does not require you to check their political credentials or determine what side they're on because it's just wrong. The difficulty will be in training yourself to think more critically about the language you encounter and to refuse to excuse it because it is aimed at a political opponent.
Some stuff is easy, like name calling. "[Name goes here] is a [epithet goes here]!" is a simple formulation that calls for critical evaluation. Calling someone a cunt, a ho, a fag, etc., is simply out of bounds. Simply starting with this would do an enormous service to the level of discourse without preventing powerful opposition.
What's harder are oblique references. What do you do with a statement like "They're just bitter knitters."? To me, this is bigoted and derogatory because of the stereotyping, the projection of intent, and the reduction of a class of people (all supporters of a candidate) to a gendered and mocked activity, but it doesn't use a "bad" word. What about a phrase like "throwing dishes" or "the claws come out"?
What about uses of language that do attempt to use bigoted words and phrases in an ironic or contestatory way? Anthony notes, "Those words and similar ones shouldn’t be tolerated no matter what comedian or pop star has used them in their act, no matter how gratifyingly transgressive they make the user feel." OK, so what about my blog tag line - "You say I'm a bitch as if that were a bad thing..." I use it to mock those who would (and do) call me a bitch. Qualities attributed to being a "bitch," being tough, getting in people's faces, fighting back against domination, are things that women are not supposed to do. Yet, it is clearly an epithet, so should I use it? Why or why not? What about my use of the tag "Media Whores"? Is calling anyone a "whore" ever acceptable?
Pressing on, what about a term that is used widely and is not aimed at anyone in particular, perhaps not even used as an epithet, but which has derogatory overtones? My current pet peeve is "bitch slap", a term linguistically paired with "pimp slap" and arising from abuse of prostitutes by pimps and johns, which was brought into the political lexicon by WKJM as "the bitch-slap theory of politics," and is now used in economics discussions by people like Paul Krugman and Ian Welsh, who used the term today in this article. Why use this particular phrase? What value does it bring except to invoke the picture of a woman being slapped around or, focusing on the slap itself, of a weak, laughable, "girly" way of doing things. Without the derogatory gendered meaning, it doesn't work.
How about agreement with the statement of others? What about Atrios and his infamous "Heh," when he quotes another person's words or links to something that is derogatory and bigoted? Does agreement or promotion deserve the same reaction as being the originator? How about stuff in the comments? Are bloggers or site proprietors to be held responsible for the language of the commenters? I say yes. What do you say?
Finally, what about non-linguistic communications? If I post an image of Anne Coulter being subjected to violence of some kind, but I don't write any objectionable words, should I be harrassed until I remove it? What about blogs that run ads that have bigoted or derogatory imagery and/or phrases?
I think Anthony is right. The only question for me is how far to take it. Commenters, share your thoughts.
Politely.
Anglachel
Saturday, October 11, 2008
More Evidence on Fannie and Freddy
From McClatchy, one of the few new organizations left that doesn't just guzzle whatever kool-aide the Very Serious People hand them, a nice smack down of the Movement Conservative argument that its all those dark-skinned poor people who are responsible for the financial crisis because of their bad home loans:
As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.
Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.
Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.
Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height vrom [sic] 2004 to 2006.
What is most notable about this news article is that it states clearly in the first sentence that this line of argument is coming from conservative quarters. No vague "some economic commenters" language; they put it right where it belongs, as a conservative red herring intended to undermine both attempts to regulate financial services and attempts to provide financial services on decent terms to lower income consumers and communities. Then the author does some analysis if the factual basis of the conservative claims and finds them grasping at straws.
Fannie, the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., don't lend money, to minorities or anyone else, however. They purchase loans from the private lenders who actually underwrite the loans.
It's a process called securitization, and by passing on the loans, banks have more capital on hand so they can lend even more.
This much is true. In an effort to promote affordable home ownership for minorities and rural whites, the Department of Housing and Urban Development set targets for Fannie and Freddie in 1992 to purchase low-income loans for sale into the secondary market that eventually reached this number: 52 percent of loans given to low-to moderate-income families.
To be sure, encouraging lower-income Americans to become homeowners gave unsophisticated borrowers and unscrupulous lenders and mortgage brokers more chances to turn dreams of homeownership in nightmares.
But these loans, and those to low- and moderate-income families represent a small portion of overall lending. And at the height of the housing boom in 2005 and 2006, Republicans and their party's standard bearer, President Bush, didn't criticize any sort of lending, frequently boasting that they were presiding over the highest-ever rates of U.S. homeownership.
Yes, there is a risk with low income borrowers. It's not like credit isn't extended to them now - it just done so under usurious terms and with a cynical hope to catch the borrowers in a cycle of debt peonage. This never gets mentioned in the conservative critique. They want to attach the act of low-income lending to a stigmatized class as a way of damaging the ability of liberal legislators and financial bureaucrats (yes, yes, precious few of any them, but they do exist) to proactively use government power to reduce barriers to wealth accumulation to previously excluded groups. They talk about individuals as credit risks, but quickly move over to condemning entire classes of people. Sadly for them, there is no conenction between their claims and the facts on the ground:
Conservative critics also blame the subprime lending mess on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 31-year-old law aimed at freeing credit for underserved neighborhoods.
...[O]nly commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.
In a speech last March, Janet Yellen, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, debunked the notion that the push for affordable housing created today's problems.
"Most of the loans made by depository institutions examined under the CRA have not been higher-priced loans," she said. "The CRA has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households."
The reason I am pushing this issue is because the ability to cut off credit on reasonable terms to classes of people is part of the larger Movement Conservatives' war on the social safety net as such. The people most hurt by this are poor and working class women and their dependent children, regardless of color.
If you want to fight the creeping fascism of the Right, then you must undermine their attempt to wrap questions of power and socio-economic resources in mantles of class resentment and racial bigotry, not just wail that we'd better vote Obama or else.
Anglachel
Monday, August 25, 2008
Obvious Injuries of Class
The convention is a snooze until Bill & Hill show up, so here is the fourth post in the Affirmative Action series. Actually, the mess that is the convention is a perfect opening to the post. Obama did not do the politically intelligent thing and ask with total seriousness (if no discernable ethusiasm) that Hillary be VP. Yes, I think she would have taken the job (more fully explained below) and I would have been obliged to vote for her. In his bungling of this, the most important decision a party nominee can make prior to actually being president (though I think, this year, given the sad-sack choices, we have to say they are running for the office of Preznit), Obama and his backers in the DNC show once again that they cannot hear what is being said directly to their faces and they do not see has been written large on every political screen since New Hampshire.
People don't give a fuck about race. Iraq isn't motivating them all that much, either, since it's obvious the question is not if but when we leave. They are scared to death of the brutal economic times ahead and they want someone to have some answers that will make their own lives more secure.
Is the campaign even talking abut this? Have they said anything concrete about helping ordinary Americnas get through the coming financial storm? Not according to Krugman or Somerby whose opinions I trust even if I don't want to hear what they say. Instead, we're getting week after week of whining about race and personal smears and impugning patriotism and who owns how many houses and whose more "in touch" with the middle class. Given the crap Biden has spewed about Obama in combination with his history of borderline racist and misogyistic remarks, it all sounds like the Obamacans are substituting their own guilty consciences for the opinion of the general public. They are so certain that the attacks will be on race and Obama's foreign/exotic presence that they appear to only be on the offensive for these kinds of arguments. They presume racism, xenophobia, accusations of elitism, questioning of patriotism. They are not wrong, because these are under attack as they are in every battle with the Republicans, but the expectations and responses are focused on these things to the exclusion of more dangerous inroads.
Also, these are the obsessions of the Stevensonian class. The power brokers of the party long ago hitched their wagons to race as the beast of burden that would pull them through to moral victory. They were on the side of the right and the good. The part of the party that would not align on this matter has been jettisoned, a necessary act that had to be done. But now the tunnel vision about race hasd become a political and cultural straight jacket. The race baiting of the campaign. Labeling Ohio voters "Archie Bunkers" for supporting Hillary. Belittling Pennsylvania voters who won't see themselves being delivered from their benighted lives by Obama. Dean's repeated references to Republicans as "the white party." The deafening howls that the only reason voters like me fail to vote for Obama is because we are racist.
The big question for me is how many Obamacans truly in their hearts believe that race explains everything in this campaign. That number is the measure of the vulnerability of the party.
The Republicans, who regard racsim as a strategic weapon and not as an evil to be eradicated, refuse to join the party. Why waste money and resources when the Democrats are doing the damage all on their own? They will, of course, throw in racist appeals before the end because they are Republicans, but they have a more effective approach for now. Where has Obama lost ground among Democratic voters? In the populations most endangered by the faltering economy and the long term erosion of socio-economic standing. He did not address what mattered most to them, which was their increasing vulnerability to the ordinary dangers of life - insurance, health care, retirement, wages, job security, housing. To fail to do this was what makes Obama come across as elitist.
The assault on AFAC by the Republicans is yet another example of how they use personalization and moralizing to turn an argument about institutions and government policy into one about personal benefit. The focus on the individual who is not hired or admitted is turned into a narrative of dark forces colluding to deprive a deserving, hard working person of their rightful place and giving it to some unqualified person, completely ignoring the larger cultural context of the program. When the college admissions process is gamed by elites to gain access to the most desireable institutions, then the broader argument becomes harder to defend.
Some have mistaken my earlier arguments about Obama and affirmative action to mean that I am attacking him from a Republican, anti-AFAC position, that I support people who make such arguments, or that I think this is a "valid" criticism of him.
No.
I'm not going to do their work for them, which is one reason I have remained silent on this topic for so long. There is a difference between saying that someone is not the best choice because he lacks experience and using false representations of affirmative action to smear a prominent Democrat in order to increase the efficacy of your campaign to destroy affirmative action.
I'm talking about the Democratic leadership's inability to understand how the simple facts of Obama's personal history combined with the blatent favortism and machinations of the DNC on his behalf is being used to effectively undermine the campaign and, more importantly, the liberal policies of the party. To respond "Racist!" when the charge is "Unqualified!" is stomping right into the sterotype of how Republicans say Democrats use AFAC - to place unqualified minorities into positions they have not earned, do not deserve and cannot perform. This is the real mesage behind the latest attack ad trying to use Hillary. It was not primarily about whether Hillary said Obama was not qualified (Like Republicans care about Hillary? Puh-leeze...), but about getting the optics in front of the viewers - white person who is really well prepared pushed aside for brown person who isn't. And with the Stevensonian fanaticism about race, they are providing all the wrong responses to this assault. The Republican campaign theme, now that Hillary is not on the ticket, is this: Look at the Democrats engaging in reverse discrimination with the office of the Presidency itself. If they will do this, they will stop at nothing to give your jobs away.
The problem is that the Democratic leadership have nothing to promote except Obama himself. They don't have policies that distinguish them from the Republicans (Sorry, we tried "I'm not Bush!" with Kerry. Didn't work out so well.), there is not a measure or cause Obama can claim as his own (AUMF is off the table with Biden as the VP), and the people most harmed by current conditions have been told that they are not wanted in Whole Foods Nation, that they are racist panhandlers at the door (Keep building that unity!).
Bill Clinton always talks about the powerful interests that try to keep us down. This is a child of the South, a man whose perceptions and convictions were forged in the middle of the battle against segregation. He was then, as he remains today, on the right side of the battle. When he talks about powerful interests, he is talking about the political and economic elites who purposefully set the poor, working and lower middle classes against each other over race in order to maintain their privilege. When the Big Dog advocates unity, it is to fight the divisions that keep people poor, disempowerd and vulnerable. He's talking about political unity to craft the policiy that will create and defend institutions that make people's lives materially better. This is unity for the sake of power.
Unity itself, taken as a good and a goal for its own sake, is powerless. It is the great High Broderistic wet-dream of perfect bipartisanship under God, party bosses indivisible, with lobbyists and cocktail weenies for all. It is ponies for everybody when what people really want is annual medical checkups and their privacy protected. "Unity or else" is a dead end because it does nothing for people. Which is why the Republicans and The Village like it. Keep the rabble in its place.
Unity for the sake of power has always been Bill's message, and now we see he was never alone with it as we listened to Hillary patiently discuss wonky topics with intent townspeople all across the country. If we do not unify for the sake of our goals, then those who profit from our disunity have won. That is what I see motivating Hillary's current campaigning, even as she is being assailed within her own party for daring to be an inspiring figure and unify voters in November. For the sake of her constituents, she will not yeild an inch to either the Republicans or the Obamacans' attempts to drive her out of public life.
The obvious injuries of class are being dismissed by the DNC and other Democratic power brokers this round, in a year when going to the policy left made perfect sense. The Republicans are eagerly pursuing the votes of those who feel injured on this count, but do so to fan the flames of resentment and division. The Stevensonian wing is all too enamored of its own moral superiority on race, too contemptuous of the Bubbas and the Bunkers, to make the slightest move to win back and thus defend this constituency.
At this point, I can no longer believe that it is just bad judgement, though stupidity is on full display. The rejection of Clinton Democrats is real. Why?
Anglachel
People don't give a fuck about race. Iraq isn't motivating them all that much, either, since it's obvious the question is not if but when we leave. They are scared to death of the brutal economic times ahead and they want someone to have some answers that will make their own lives more secure.
Is the campaign even talking abut this? Have they said anything concrete about helping ordinary Americnas get through the coming financial storm? Not according to Krugman or Somerby whose opinions I trust even if I don't want to hear what they say. Instead, we're getting week after week of whining about race and personal smears and impugning patriotism and who owns how many houses and whose more "in touch" with the middle class. Given the crap Biden has spewed about Obama in combination with his history of borderline racist and misogyistic remarks, it all sounds like the Obamacans are substituting their own guilty consciences for the opinion of the general public. They are so certain that the attacks will be on race and Obama's foreign/exotic presence that they appear to only be on the offensive for these kinds of arguments. They presume racism, xenophobia, accusations of elitism, questioning of patriotism. They are not wrong, because these are under attack as they are in every battle with the Republicans, but the expectations and responses are focused on these things to the exclusion of more dangerous inroads.
Also, these are the obsessions of the Stevensonian class. The power brokers of the party long ago hitched their wagons to race as the beast of burden that would pull them through to moral victory. They were on the side of the right and the good. The part of the party that would not align on this matter has been jettisoned, a necessary act that had to be done. But now the tunnel vision about race hasd become a political and cultural straight jacket. The race baiting of the campaign. Labeling Ohio voters "Archie Bunkers" for supporting Hillary. Belittling Pennsylvania voters who won't see themselves being delivered from their benighted lives by Obama. Dean's repeated references to Republicans as "the white party." The deafening howls that the only reason voters like me fail to vote for Obama is because we are racist.
The big question for me is how many Obamacans truly in their hearts believe that race explains everything in this campaign. That number is the measure of the vulnerability of the party.
The Republicans, who regard racsim as a strategic weapon and not as an evil to be eradicated, refuse to join the party. Why waste money and resources when the Democrats are doing the damage all on their own? They will, of course, throw in racist appeals before the end because they are Republicans, but they have a more effective approach for now. Where has Obama lost ground among Democratic voters? In the populations most endangered by the faltering economy and the long term erosion of socio-economic standing. He did not address what mattered most to them, which was their increasing vulnerability to the ordinary dangers of life - insurance, health care, retirement, wages, job security, housing. To fail to do this was what makes Obama come across as elitist.
The assault on AFAC by the Republicans is yet another example of how they use personalization and moralizing to turn an argument about institutions and government policy into one about personal benefit. The focus on the individual who is not hired or admitted is turned into a narrative of dark forces colluding to deprive a deserving, hard working person of their rightful place and giving it to some unqualified person, completely ignoring the larger cultural context of the program. When the college admissions process is gamed by elites to gain access to the most desireable institutions, then the broader argument becomes harder to defend.
Some have mistaken my earlier arguments about Obama and affirmative action to mean that I am attacking him from a Republican, anti-AFAC position, that I support people who make such arguments, or that I think this is a "valid" criticism of him.
No.
I'm not going to do their work for them, which is one reason I have remained silent on this topic for so long. There is a difference between saying that someone is not the best choice because he lacks experience and using false representations of affirmative action to smear a prominent Democrat in order to increase the efficacy of your campaign to destroy affirmative action.
I'm talking about the Democratic leadership's inability to understand how the simple facts of Obama's personal history combined with the blatent favortism and machinations of the DNC on his behalf is being used to effectively undermine the campaign and, more importantly, the liberal policies of the party. To respond "Racist!" when the charge is "Unqualified!" is stomping right into the sterotype of how Republicans say Democrats use AFAC - to place unqualified minorities into positions they have not earned, do not deserve and cannot perform. This is the real mesage behind the latest attack ad trying to use Hillary. It was not primarily about whether Hillary said Obama was not qualified (Like Republicans care about Hillary? Puh-leeze...), but about getting the optics in front of the viewers - white person who is really well prepared pushed aside for brown person who isn't. And with the Stevensonian fanaticism about race, they are providing all the wrong responses to this assault. The Republican campaign theme, now that Hillary is not on the ticket, is this: Look at the Democrats engaging in reverse discrimination with the office of the Presidency itself. If they will do this, they will stop at nothing to give your jobs away.
The problem is that the Democratic leadership have nothing to promote except Obama himself. They don't have policies that distinguish them from the Republicans (Sorry, we tried "I'm not Bush!" with Kerry. Didn't work out so well.), there is not a measure or cause Obama can claim as his own (AUMF is off the table with Biden as the VP), and the people most harmed by current conditions have been told that they are not wanted in Whole Foods Nation, that they are racist panhandlers at the door (Keep building that unity!).
Bill Clinton always talks about the powerful interests that try to keep us down. This is a child of the South, a man whose perceptions and convictions were forged in the middle of the battle against segregation. He was then, as he remains today, on the right side of the battle. When he talks about powerful interests, he is talking about the political and economic elites who purposefully set the poor, working and lower middle classes against each other over race in order to maintain their privilege. When the Big Dog advocates unity, it is to fight the divisions that keep people poor, disempowerd and vulnerable. He's talking about political unity to craft the policiy that will create and defend institutions that make people's lives materially better. This is unity for the sake of power.
Unity itself, taken as a good and a goal for its own sake, is powerless. It is the great High Broderistic wet-dream of perfect bipartisanship under God, party bosses indivisible, with lobbyists and cocktail weenies for all. It is ponies for everybody when what people really want is annual medical checkups and their privacy protected. "Unity or else" is a dead end because it does nothing for people. Which is why the Republicans and The Village like it. Keep the rabble in its place.
Unity for the sake of power has always been Bill's message, and now we see he was never alone with it as we listened to Hillary patiently discuss wonky topics with intent townspeople all across the country. If we do not unify for the sake of our goals, then those who profit from our disunity have won. That is what I see motivating Hillary's current campaigning, even as she is being assailed within her own party for daring to be an inspiring figure and unify voters in November. For the sake of her constituents, she will not yeild an inch to either the Republicans or the Obamacans' attempts to drive her out of public life.
The obvious injuries of class are being dismissed by the DNC and other Democratic power brokers this round, in a year when going to the policy left made perfect sense. The Republicans are eagerly pursuing the votes of those who feel injured on this count, but do so to fan the flames of resentment and division. The Stevensonian wing is all too enamored of its own moral superiority on race, too contemptuous of the Bubbas and the Bunkers, to make the slightest move to win back and thus defend this constituency.
At this point, I can no longer believe that it is just bad judgement, though stupidity is on full display. The rejection of Clinton Democrats is real. Why?
Anglachel
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Personal Benefit
A comment was submitted that was worded in such a way that I don't know if it was sarcastic, ironic, sincere but badly put, trying to get a rise out of me or what. The overall message was how have I personally benefitted from Affirmative Action since I seem to disdain other middle class people using it. OK, here's the answer.
I have benefitted enormously from AFAC. I think I'd be hating life about now if the conditions for women today were the same as what they were when I was born. I remember growing up that there were only four professions open to women - mother, school teacher, nurse and fairy princess. I remember my mother unable to have a credit card in her own name. I remember her joy at returning to college and finishing her BA. I remember the algebra teacher who would not give any girl in his class an A because girls couldn't actually understand algebra, but neither would he give a girl an F because she couldn't really fail at something she didn't understand. Maybe that's why I always got a D - I never bothered to do work that could never earn what it was worth.
What I do now, working in a senior position in an IT shop, treated with respect and given much authority, placed in a management track, this would not have been available to me at the beginning of my life. Did anyone making a decision to hire me say "She's only #3 on the list, but she's got tits, so hire her"? I have no idea as I wasn't privy to the decision meetings. Maybe that's exactly how I got my foot in the IT door. What I do know is that it was the tireless efforts of women from Abigial Adams to Sojourner Truth to Susan B. Anthony to Eleanor Roosevelt to Shirley Chisolm to Hillary Rodham Cinton that have won me the luxury to not even think about why I was hired, to engage in significant financial transactions without my spouse or father as a co-signer, to have access to safe and affordable birth control, and so forth.
It's not complete. I am the primary taxpayer on our tax returns with hubby filling in the "Spouse" columns. One year, the state of Califonia sent us the income tax booklet to Mr. Gurthang, Anglachel and Mrs. Unit, Spousal. It's not like we have gender neutral names like Shawn and Taylor either. The taxpayer was the man and the spouse was the woman - didn't we know that? I showed it to my class on gender and the students got an initial laugh, then starting thinking...
What I am also the benficiary of is centuries of white supremacy that has only begun to be dismantled since I was born. If I had been dark-skinned, my psycho ex-boss would never have hired me and given me my entry into the IT world when I changed careers. My father would have been barred from his college education and probably would have stayed in the military to make a living. He would have been in a desegregated Marine Corps, while his father would have been in a segregated Navy, and would not have been a surgeon. The university he went to might have let in hay seed farm boys with a hankering for something besides dirt, but they didn't allow "coloreds" in. The wealth, the education, the acculturation that a white middle class third generation professional can take for granted is clearly a benefit to me. The spousal unit may have been the first college graduate in his family (his mother was the first high school graduate), but his family was considered "white", not even Hispanic, and so could rise in the post war boom.
I'm just pointing out some advantages in education and employment. I'm not getting into things like housing, treatment by police, elegibility for pensions and retirement funds, access to medical care, public transportation and other public amenities. These are things I can take for granted that other citizens cannot, not with the automatic certainty I enjoy.
So, yes, I have benefitted greatly from long standing bigotry and from recent equality. To use Hillary's phrase, I have been blessed in what I have encountered in my life, and I agree with her that it is incumbent upon me to use these blessings to demolish the first source of benefit and expand the second, both for what I will rightly lose and for what I may help myself and others gain.
Anglachel
I have benefitted enormously from AFAC. I think I'd be hating life about now if the conditions for women today were the same as what they were when I was born. I remember growing up that there were only four professions open to women - mother, school teacher, nurse and fairy princess. I remember my mother unable to have a credit card in her own name. I remember her joy at returning to college and finishing her BA. I remember the algebra teacher who would not give any girl in his class an A because girls couldn't actually understand algebra, but neither would he give a girl an F because she couldn't really fail at something she didn't understand. Maybe that's why I always got a D - I never bothered to do work that could never earn what it was worth.
What I do now, working in a senior position in an IT shop, treated with respect and given much authority, placed in a management track, this would not have been available to me at the beginning of my life. Did anyone making a decision to hire me say "She's only #3 on the list, but she's got tits, so hire her"? I have no idea as I wasn't privy to the decision meetings. Maybe that's exactly how I got my foot in the IT door. What I do know is that it was the tireless efforts of women from Abigial Adams to Sojourner Truth to Susan B. Anthony to Eleanor Roosevelt to Shirley Chisolm to Hillary Rodham Cinton that have won me the luxury to not even think about why I was hired, to engage in significant financial transactions without my spouse or father as a co-signer, to have access to safe and affordable birth control, and so forth.
It's not complete. I am the primary taxpayer on our tax returns with hubby filling in the "Spouse" columns. One year, the state of Califonia sent us the income tax booklet to Mr. Gurthang, Anglachel and Mrs. Unit, Spousal. It's not like we have gender neutral names like Shawn and Taylor either. The taxpayer was the man and the spouse was the woman - didn't we know that? I showed it to my class on gender and the students got an initial laugh, then starting thinking...
What I am also the benficiary of is centuries of white supremacy that has only begun to be dismantled since I was born. If I had been dark-skinned, my psycho ex-boss would never have hired me and given me my entry into the IT world when I changed careers. My father would have been barred from his college education and probably would have stayed in the military to make a living. He would have been in a desegregated Marine Corps, while his father would have been in a segregated Navy, and would not have been a surgeon. The university he went to might have let in hay seed farm boys with a hankering for something besides dirt, but they didn't allow "coloreds" in. The wealth, the education, the acculturation that a white middle class third generation professional can take for granted is clearly a benefit to me. The spousal unit may have been the first college graduate in his family (his mother was the first high school graduate), but his family was considered "white", not even Hispanic, and so could rise in the post war boom.
I'm just pointing out some advantages in education and employment. I'm not getting into things like housing, treatment by police, elegibility for pensions and retirement funds, access to medical care, public transportation and other public amenities. These are things I can take for granted that other citizens cannot, not with the automatic certainty I enjoy.
So, yes, I have benefitted greatly from long standing bigotry and from recent equality. To use Hillary's phrase, I have been blessed in what I have encountered in my life, and I agree with her that it is incumbent upon me to use these blessings to demolish the first source of benefit and expand the second, both for what I will rightly lose and for what I may help myself and others gain.
Anglachel
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Beneath Contempt
So Howard Dean called the Republican Party "the white party". Strategically speaking, this insult (he has said it before in other situations so it is neither a gaffe nor an accident) is beyond tone deaf and is sheer political idiocy. This moronic mouthing off plays into every standard stereotype of an arrogant Stevensonian elitist and adds fuel to the race-baiting fires already burning through the Democrats' support this year, thanks to Obama's smear-and-run campaign.
This is a different claim than if Dean had gone after the Republicans as the "racist party" or even the "anti-minorty party", which is what he probably thought he was doing. By making an insult out of a biological fact instead of a pattern of behavior, Dean has declared that he (and thus Democrats as such, being as how he is the DNC Chair) think that "white" is a suspect and dangerous category of person. He did a crude inversion of racist claims about non-whites and it says a hell of a lot about the moral and ethical midden between Dean's ears.
What has Dean done? He has replaced political claims with personal morality, and has attached that moral condition to a biological one. One of the things this electoral cycle has thrown into relief is the way in which Stevensonians like Dean make shame stand in for policy, and reduce structural problems in society into questions of personal choice. This approach intellectualizes material problems, such as health care or just compensation, rejecting relationships of power or even common sense evaluation of actual living conditions in favor of finger wagging at the people on the short-end of the stick. Retrograde social beliefs (Guns & God!) are the reason for economic stagnation, not the gutless behavior of Congress or state legislatures. It looks aside from power relationships that keep socio-economic elites in control, and doesn't want to sully its pure ideas with "pandering" i.e., providing material benefits to woo rank and file supporters away from the other side. "You people" should know that we are your salvation from your benighted lives. You should be smart enough to know better than to vote for the other guy, and you can't be mad if we dump on you for being so stupid. If you won't do what you know you should do, I'm going to call you WHITE, so there!
This is both insult and challenge. It offers only stick and no carrot, and it does so by trying to shame people for inhabiting a condition they cannot change - their own skin. This is why racial categories are so deeply pernicious; how can you stop being you genetic condition? Race rather than racism, a condition rather than a behavior, is targeted with no way out.
This has to be the absolutely worst way to try to get people to abandon their cultural identification. It is reducing the complexity of an individual to a stereotype rather than teasing out the parts of that identity that can be built up in opposition to the artificial simplicity of that stereotype.
What can it mean for an incredibly privileged male of Northern European ethnic decent to snear that the main opposition party is the "white party"? He may imagine that everybody who hears this of course understands that he means a particular mode of societal privilege that is normative for how individuals are ranked and treated and which is encapsulated in a speech act that accompanies the term "white", which is not equivalent to genetic inheritance but is rather a socially constructed pattern of rules, behaviors, unarticulated expectations for relative treatment accorded to specific individuals without regard for their particularity, but most people think Howie just said, "White people suck." And how is it that Dean can exempt himself and all of his predominantly white and male cohorts from that incendiary claim?
Like it or not, Howard Dean has just made the claim that if you are white, you are A) racist and B) Republican, your actual acts and deeds in this world not withstanding. The only way to be relieved of this taint is to vote Obama. Not even Democrat - you must vote for Obama. If Obama should fail at the polls, then all "white" Americans stand indicted for racism because that is the only way he can fail and the only reason for failing to vote for The Precious is you're just a racist white Republican at heart.
The impulse among old-line Stevensonian leadership to accuse other people of racism at the drop of a hat, categorically condemning millions of white voters, will do nothing to bring voters of all ethnicities together to support progressive politics. This is a fundamental failure of this faction within the Democratic Party and is why we consistently lose national elections.
Anglachel
This is a different claim than if Dean had gone after the Republicans as the "racist party" or even the "anti-minorty party", which is what he probably thought he was doing. By making an insult out of a biological fact instead of a pattern of behavior, Dean has declared that he (and thus Democrats as such, being as how he is the DNC Chair) think that "white" is a suspect and dangerous category of person. He did a crude inversion of racist claims about non-whites and it says a hell of a lot about the moral and ethical midden between Dean's ears.
What has Dean done? He has replaced political claims with personal morality, and has attached that moral condition to a biological one. One of the things this electoral cycle has thrown into relief is the way in which Stevensonians like Dean make shame stand in for policy, and reduce structural problems in society into questions of personal choice. This approach intellectualizes material problems, such as health care or just compensation, rejecting relationships of power or even common sense evaluation of actual living conditions in favor of finger wagging at the people on the short-end of the stick. Retrograde social beliefs (Guns & God!) are the reason for economic stagnation, not the gutless behavior of Congress or state legislatures. It looks aside from power relationships that keep socio-economic elites in control, and doesn't want to sully its pure ideas with "pandering" i.e., providing material benefits to woo rank and file supporters away from the other side. "You people" should know that we are your salvation from your benighted lives. You should be smart enough to know better than to vote for the other guy, and you can't be mad if we dump on you for being so stupid. If you won't do what you know you should do, I'm going to call you WHITE, so there!
This is both insult and challenge. It offers only stick and no carrot, and it does so by trying to shame people for inhabiting a condition they cannot change - their own skin. This is why racial categories are so deeply pernicious; how can you stop being you genetic condition? Race rather than racism, a condition rather than a behavior, is targeted with no way out.
This has to be the absolutely worst way to try to get people to abandon their cultural identification. It is reducing the complexity of an individual to a stereotype rather than teasing out the parts of that identity that can be built up in opposition to the artificial simplicity of that stereotype.
What can it mean for an incredibly privileged male of Northern European ethnic decent to snear that the main opposition party is the "white party"? He may imagine that everybody who hears this of course understands that he means a particular mode of societal privilege that is normative for how individuals are ranked and treated and which is encapsulated in a speech act that accompanies the term "white", which is not equivalent to genetic inheritance but is rather a socially constructed pattern of rules, behaviors, unarticulated expectations for relative treatment accorded to specific individuals without regard for their particularity, but most people think Howie just said, "White people suck." And how is it that Dean can exempt himself and all of his predominantly white and male cohorts from that incendiary claim?
Like it or not, Howard Dean has just made the claim that if you are white, you are A) racist and B) Republican, your actual acts and deeds in this world not withstanding. The only way to be relieved of this taint is to vote Obama. Not even Democrat - you must vote for Obama. If Obama should fail at the polls, then all "white" Americans stand indicted for racism because that is the only way he can fail and the only reason for failing to vote for The Precious is you're just a racist white Republican at heart.
The impulse among old-line Stevensonian leadership to accuse other people of racism at the drop of a hat, categorically condemning millions of white voters, will do nothing to bring voters of all ethnicities together to support progressive politics. This is a fundamental failure of this faction within the Democratic Party and is why we consistently lose national elections.
Anglachel
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Barking Up the Wrong Tree
It's a bit of an old topic, but I'm going to talk about dog whistles in politics. I missed out on the debate when it was still hot, so what I'm going to write is more of an analysis of political rhetoric than an answer to the blogospheric mudslinging. I'm inspired by two posts I partly agree with, partly disagree with, the first by PolC in a direct answer to Digby's inane arguments about the use and abuse of the term "presumptuous" when applied to Obama, the second a related and powerful post by the Incomparable Bob Somerby about the Democratic tin-ear for rhetoric.
What Digby et. al. wailed and rent their garments over was not racist dog whistles. They picked up a political term with negative connotations and then used it to make a false claim about a political claim - that any attempt to use language that questioned Obama's experience, qualifications and/or public demeanor were deliberate attempts to stir up racism in the listeners. First of all, the statements were whistling, but not about race. They also were exactly what they appeared to be - direct and clear criticisms of a candidate in an attempt to draw attention to perceived weakness. The glaring hole in the argument being offered was, in Freud's apocryphal phrase, that a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, i.e., sometimes the text is exactly what it seems to be. As Bob Somberby explained:
"McCain is calling Obama a lightweight." Hold onto that thought, boys and girls, we'll come back to it.
PolC offers some examples of what Digby called dog whistles. Rather than arguing the racist content of the specific examples, I want to exmine the mode of political rhetoric being used. The examples are Reagan talking about "welfare queens," Reagan kicking off his campaign in Philedelphia MS with a speech about state's rights, Bush I's Willie Horton ad, Jesse Helm's "Hands" ad against Harvey Gantt, and Bob Corker's "Call Me" ad against Harold Ford. PolC Also tossed in the black daughter rumor about John McCain in 2000 and has discussed Bush II's mention of Dred Scott in the 2004 debates.
The first thing that strikes me about this collection of political arguments is that they very neatly fall into two categories - black/white sex and public policy. The Willie Horton ad, the rumor about McCain, and the "Call Me" ad have virtually no sub-text. It's all about rousing white voters' fears of attack. They have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and are aimed at riling up voters and increasing turn out. They are about what the other guy will do to you or will fail to do for you.
The others are more truly dog whistles in that they primarily are intended to convey something about the candidate who originates the argument, something that goes against a more public argument and has more to do with policy than with race. The point of a dog whistle is that ordinary listeners will not pick up on the message, using racism to mask or deflect the policy argument. You can call them multi-layered in a way the other examples are not, because they have different emphasis to different listeners.
People who wish to act out racial resentments can listen to Reagan speak of welfare queens and be assured that this guy will go after those black cheats getting rich off other people's tax money. But, referencing Paul Krugman, the people who help keep the Republicans in power are not just voting racial solidarity, they are voting economic self-interest. The "white flight" from Democrats to Republicans gets higher in higher income brackets. The message that they get from the welfare queen remarks is that Reagan is going to cut off all the "undeserving" poor from the dole. Race is the wedge to disrupt economic solidarity in working class voters and begin dismantling the New Deal welfare state.
Likewise, Bush II's mention of Dred Scott was a statement to make clear to anti-abortion foes and to anti-privacy interests that he will stack the courts with judges who will oppose claims to individual privacy. Saving the unborn may have a visceral tug, but the policy goal is to undermine privacy protections as such, and Bush is making clear to supporters who may think he is too moderate what he intends to do to cement movement conservative objectives in the public realm. Helm's "Hands" ad is the most insidious as it manages to be overtly racist (no need for whistles) but the real message is about dismantling affirmative action as such. Racism is the fuel, but not the engine of that message.
Which brings us back to the arguments about Obama being presumptuous and a lightweight. The dog whistle here, to the degree that it is present (and believe me it will get stronger) is about qualifications for your job. It is an argument not about race but about affirmative action. McCain is never going to hint that Obama's race is a problem - it's all going to be about the education, the experience, the qualifications, the substance, the way in which McCain has earned what he has achieved (a load of horseshit, of course, but horseshit that can becomes some mighty powerful fertilizer) and how Obama has breezed in on celebrity, blatant fixing by party bosses and, hmm, just how did you get into Columbia, good chap?
The boogey-monster the Right has settled on for this electoral cycle is affirmative action. Abortion is pretty much worn out, gay rights is beginning to boomerang back on them, so they need a new angle of assault on the New Deal and the Great Society. I talked about this obliquely earlier this year and now I'll say it plainly. The Republicans have set up affirmative action challenges in key states that have been trending blue, such as Colorado and Missouri, because that is the glue that holds together their two overlapping core constituencies - whites who really are racists and whites who want to secure their economic status in the face of tougher economic times and an increasingly poor, female and non-white working class. It is also an argument that appeals to a sense of fairness - the most qualified should get the position, not someone to fill up a color quota. This is the issue chosen to counter the three key candidates the Democrats would pick from for the top of the ticket - Hillary (female and Clinton), Obama (Black and inexperienced with a lot of collateral personal baggage), and Edwards (white male, but promoting poor rights and with a bimbo problem on the side).
Obama is the candidate against whom this argument can be deployed most effectively. You Obamacans can scream bloody murder at me all you want, but it is simply a fact. His race makes the argument easier to make, but it is his muddy personal history, his razor thin resume, and his questionable electoral wins that make him vulnerable. As Somerby pointed out, the squalls of "Racism! Racism!" do nothing but play into their hands as well because the Republican argument isn't about race. It may appeal to racists, but affirmative action can be defeated even in California (in a way that gay marriage probably will not) because it is, at base, about economic competition and rules that deliberately confer advantage to a less formally qualified contestant. When Obama defenders can't get out of primary campaign mode and reckless accusations of racism (because some well-off white liberals really can be shamed into voting for someone just because he is Black), they do nothing but reinforce the Republican charge against affirmative action; that it is merely promotion of race, it is not about potential or character or disadvantage (In what world is Barack Obama "disadvantaged"?), but about pushing qualified students and job applicants out of the way for lazy non-whites. It is simple for them to work in xenophobia and jingosim, too, by talking about promotion of "illegals" over "citizens".
The dog whistle here is on behalf of McCain. He's earned this job and he will make sure that you get what you have earned, unlike these effete Democrats (sorry, that's always going to be part of the argument) who let themselves be bullied into placating interest groups and handing out unearned rewards. St. John the Maverick will give you straight-talk and an honest deal. On another day, I'll get a bit more into the "high-minded ways" that Somerby mentions because that, too, is part of the attack on affirmative action, one the Obamacans of Whole Foods Nation seem incapable of understanding.
Racist dog whistles? Sorry, Digby, you're barking up the wrong tree.
Anglachel
What Digby et. al. wailed and rent their garments over was not racist dog whistles. They picked up a political term with negative connotations and then used it to make a false claim about a political claim - that any attempt to use language that questioned Obama's experience, qualifications and/or public demeanor were deliberate attempts to stir up racism in the listeners. First of all, the statements were whistling, but not about race. They also were exactly what they appeared to be - direct and clear criticisms of a candidate in an attempt to draw attention to perceived weakness. The glaring hole in the argument being offered was, in Freud's apocryphal phrase, that a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, i.e., sometimes the text is exactly what it seems to be. As Bob Somberby explained:
It was amazingly foolish to scream and yell about that Spears/Hilton ad—except to say that its foolishness shows that the GOP wants to distract you. It was especially dumb to discuss it in terms of race—to discuss its alleged “dog-whistle”—since that’s a claim that will almost surely strike most undecided voters as far-fetched, improbable, odd. It wasn’t smart to react that way—unless we don’t care who wins in November. If we only care about being “right” (in our minds), then that reaction made good sense, of course.
In past decades, liberals and lefties did this sort of thing quite often, as you might recall reading Nixonland. This week, we rushed to take the bait again, displaying our high-minded ways.
Earth to liberals: In that Spears/Hilton ad, McCain is calling Obama a lightweight. It’s what Walter Mondale did to Gary Hart when he mockingly asked, “Where’s the beef?” It’s what experienced candidates do when confronting inexperienced challengers. Unfortunately, we reacted in lightweight ways—by yelling race and seeking relief—and the numbers began to move. It’s how our side has lost elections at various times in the past.
"McCain is calling Obama a lightweight." Hold onto that thought, boys and girls, we'll come back to it.
PolC offers some examples of what Digby called dog whistles. Rather than arguing the racist content of the specific examples, I want to exmine the mode of political rhetoric being used. The examples are Reagan talking about "welfare queens," Reagan kicking off his campaign in Philedelphia MS with a speech about state's rights, Bush I's Willie Horton ad, Jesse Helm's "Hands" ad against Harvey Gantt, and Bob Corker's "Call Me" ad against Harold Ford. PolC Also tossed in the black daughter rumor about John McCain in 2000 and has discussed Bush II's mention of Dred Scott in the 2004 debates.
The first thing that strikes me about this collection of political arguments is that they very neatly fall into two categories - black/white sex and public policy. The Willie Horton ad, the rumor about McCain, and the "Call Me" ad have virtually no sub-text. It's all about rousing white voters' fears of attack. They have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and are aimed at riling up voters and increasing turn out. They are about what the other guy will do to you or will fail to do for you.
The others are more truly dog whistles in that they primarily are intended to convey something about the candidate who originates the argument, something that goes against a more public argument and has more to do with policy than with race. The point of a dog whistle is that ordinary listeners will not pick up on the message, using racism to mask or deflect the policy argument. You can call them multi-layered in a way the other examples are not, because they have different emphasis to different listeners.
People who wish to act out racial resentments can listen to Reagan speak of welfare queens and be assured that this guy will go after those black cheats getting rich off other people's tax money. But, referencing Paul Krugman, the people who help keep the Republicans in power are not just voting racial solidarity, they are voting economic self-interest. The "white flight" from Democrats to Republicans gets higher in higher income brackets. The message that they get from the welfare queen remarks is that Reagan is going to cut off all the "undeserving" poor from the dole. Race is the wedge to disrupt economic solidarity in working class voters and begin dismantling the New Deal welfare state.
Likewise, Bush II's mention of Dred Scott was a statement to make clear to anti-abortion foes and to anti-privacy interests that he will stack the courts with judges who will oppose claims to individual privacy. Saving the unborn may have a visceral tug, but the policy goal is to undermine privacy protections as such, and Bush is making clear to supporters who may think he is too moderate what he intends to do to cement movement conservative objectives in the public realm. Helm's "Hands" ad is the most insidious as it manages to be overtly racist (no need for whistles) but the real message is about dismantling affirmative action as such. Racism is the fuel, but not the engine of that message.
Which brings us back to the arguments about Obama being presumptuous and a lightweight. The dog whistle here, to the degree that it is present (and believe me it will get stronger) is about qualifications for your job. It is an argument not about race but about affirmative action. McCain is never going to hint that Obama's race is a problem - it's all going to be about the education, the experience, the qualifications, the substance, the way in which McCain has earned what he has achieved (a load of horseshit, of course, but horseshit that can becomes some mighty powerful fertilizer) and how Obama has breezed in on celebrity, blatant fixing by party bosses and, hmm, just how did you get into Columbia, good chap?
The boogey-monster the Right has settled on for this electoral cycle is affirmative action. Abortion is pretty much worn out, gay rights is beginning to boomerang back on them, so they need a new angle of assault on the New Deal and the Great Society. I talked about this obliquely earlier this year and now I'll say it plainly. The Republicans have set up affirmative action challenges in key states that have been trending blue, such as Colorado and Missouri, because that is the glue that holds together their two overlapping core constituencies - whites who really are racists and whites who want to secure their economic status in the face of tougher economic times and an increasingly poor, female and non-white working class. It is also an argument that appeals to a sense of fairness - the most qualified should get the position, not someone to fill up a color quota. This is the issue chosen to counter the three key candidates the Democrats would pick from for the top of the ticket - Hillary (female and Clinton), Obama (Black and inexperienced with a lot of collateral personal baggage), and Edwards (white male, but promoting poor rights and with a bimbo problem on the side).
Obama is the candidate against whom this argument can be deployed most effectively. You Obamacans can scream bloody murder at me all you want, but it is simply a fact. His race makes the argument easier to make, but it is his muddy personal history, his razor thin resume, and his questionable electoral wins that make him vulnerable. As Somerby pointed out, the squalls of "Racism! Racism!" do nothing but play into their hands as well because the Republican argument isn't about race. It may appeal to racists, but affirmative action can be defeated even in California (in a way that gay marriage probably will not) because it is, at base, about economic competition and rules that deliberately confer advantage to a less formally qualified contestant. When Obama defenders can't get out of primary campaign mode and reckless accusations of racism (because some well-off white liberals really can be shamed into voting for someone just because he is Black), they do nothing but reinforce the Republican charge against affirmative action; that it is merely promotion of race, it is not about potential or character or disadvantage (In what world is Barack Obama "disadvantaged"?), but about pushing qualified students and job applicants out of the way for lazy non-whites. It is simple for them to work in xenophobia and jingosim, too, by talking about promotion of "illegals" over "citizens".
The dog whistle here is on behalf of McCain. He's earned this job and he will make sure that you get what you have earned, unlike these effete Democrats (sorry, that's always going to be part of the argument) who let themselves be bullied into placating interest groups and handing out unearned rewards. St. John the Maverick will give you straight-talk and an honest deal. On another day, I'll get a bit more into the "high-minded ways" that Somerby mentions because that, too, is part of the attack on affirmative action, one the Obamacans of Whole Foods Nation seem incapable of understanding.
Racist dog whistles? Sorry, Digby, you're barking up the wrong tree.
Anglachel
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Exercise in Logic
Certain Blogger Boyz like Kevin Drum and Greg Sargent are absolutely, 100%, no doubt about it, yesirree Bob convinced that Hillary Clinton ran a racist campaign because.... well, because! Isn't that enough for you? Everybody says so! No one would keep saying this if it wasn't true, would they? Anyway, we all know poor white people are racist and they voted for her, therefore she obviously was making racist appeals to get their votes. If they say something different, they are lying. How could there not be racism if all the talking heads and Jesse Jackson Jr. said there was racism?
If that is so, then why is the Congressional Black Caucus trying to make Obama put her on the ticket as VP? Why are African American voters more likely to say they want her on the ticket than any other Democratic group? Could it be they know that the accusations of racism were untrue from the start, seeing as millions of Hillary voters saw, that this was a campaign tactic, and are actually perfectly happy to support Hillary?
Gee, do you think this could all have been a bunch of lies that the Clinton hating media was more than happy to babble over and over?
Anglachel
If that is so, then why is the Congressional Black Caucus trying to make Obama put her on the ticket as VP? Why are African American voters more likely to say they want her on the ticket than any other Democratic group? Could it be they know that the accusations of racism were untrue from the start, seeing as millions of Hillary voters saw, that this was a campaign tactic, and are actually perfectly happy to support Hillary?
Gee, do you think this could all have been a bunch of lies that the Clinton hating media was more than happy to babble over and over?
Anglachel
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Visceral Reactions
This post may get me kicked out of the PB 2.0 community, but I really don't give a damn.
First, this is Krugman from today:
I've waited patiently for several days to see if anything of substance would come out of the much ballyhooed announcement by Larry Johnson about a video that alleges Michelle Obama said something objectionable, possibly using a derogatory racial term. I posted a few cautions, and said I needed to see the evidence before making up my mind. This alleged scandal has been pushed for several weeks now, and there have been several days of explanations, each of them at odds in some way with the others. I've made up my mind on this matter.
It is a ratfucking operation by the Republicans and it has done exactly what it was intended to do - set Democrats at each others' throats, stir up racist and anti-Muslim sentiment, and encourage people to enagage in misogynist attacks on Michelle Obama.
At best, Larry Johnson is being played for a fool by these people. His desire to defeat Obama is coming out of a desire to get back at the radical left of the 60s. Obama is his access point to people like Ayers, Wright and Farrakhan, and he's grabbing for every rock that comes to hand, not paying much attention to the dynamite that is taking its place. That there is little to defend in that group does not excuse the irresponsible conduct by any number of people over at No Quarter. I admit to a certain grim satisfaction that two elements I don't much care for in American political life - the violent nihilists of the Left and their mirror-image Cold Warrior, red-baiting fellow nihilists of the right - are duking it out. Couldn't happen to a better pair. But what is spilling over from this decades old grudge match into the rest of the blogs is pure toxic waste - misogyny, racism and anti-Muslim calumny.
Let's get something clear. I do not give a flying fuck if Michelle Obama did say "whitey" in some video tape from whenever and wherever and with whomever she supposedly said it. Period. I sincerely doubt that anything we finally see will rise to the level of what we have been led to believe happened. Furthermore, I do not care if Michelle Obama is unpleasant, nice as apple pie, indifferent to the world, filled with petty resentment, serene and loving, or anything else about the state of her psyche. I'm willing to wager she is all of those things depending on where she is and who she's talking to, just as every major public female figure I have read about has had her inner soul meticulously dissected before the public eye and has been found wanting. The assault on Michelle Obama is exactly like the assault on Hillary Clinton when Bill was running for the White House. It is mean, vile, sexist, crude, derogatory and beneath contempt.
It has also become the ignition spark for a growing fire of racism in the comments, couched as opposition to Black Liberation Theology and to Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. The agitation for this hatred began on the right explicitly with their attacks on Wright's church, which has been part of the underground rightwing email war against Obama from the start. These are things the spousal unit and I were reading this time last year when it became clear Obama was going to try for a run at the Presidency. Ironically, it probably would have stayed in that sewer through the Democratic primary had not Obama decided that running on racism was a good idea. Once he opened Pandora's box, the Wright stuff began to be lobbed back at him. The connections with Farrakhan and with Tony Rezko have been used to tie him maliciously to Islam (and to rabble rouse about that religion in exactly the same way as I see people using "Israel" to indulge in some not very subtle anti-Semitism), pretending in wide-eyed innocence that it's all about his
"terrorist" ties.
Just in the way that misogyny made it easy to engage in the purely personal classist warfare and white-on-white bigotry against Hillary, misogyny is making it easy to batter Michelle Obama and slide in the other racial and religious attacks as well, all aimed at stirring up the most crude and hateful impulses in the readers.
Over the last week, I have watched this toxic brew spread out from No Quarter and into other blogs. The anger over the RBC decision and over the hostile and dismissive way Hillary has been treated in the last week of campaigning no doubt made it easier to rationalize dipping into the uglier phrases, the barely concealed slurs, the code words that Americans always use to describe the reviled Other when they are angry and want to rip something down.
We are seeing within the primary itself the misogynistic, racist, religion-bashing attacks that everyone expected to see in the general. The difference is that these accusations are coming out of Democratic mouths and are aimed at our Democratic candidates.
This is doing the Right's work for them.
I'm not giving "our" side a pass on this. No matter how unfair or vile the attacks on Hillary, she has never responded with anything but class. She has never stooped to "But they did it, too!" When people on her campaign tried to use the smears, she canned them.
I have not changed my mind on Obama as a candidate. He ran a dirty campaign, he had every external advantage and the DNC still had to rig the system to shove him across the line ahead of her by a nose. I have also not changed my mind about the wrong way to conduct any kind of political campaign, which is to employ the tactics of the Right. I will have a longer post this weekend on that point.
My screen name, Anglachel, refers to a sword in the Tolkien fantasy world. It was forged from meteoric iron by someone with a deep hatred of those around him, and it took on the deadly, twisted nature of Eol. It slew anyone who tried to weild it, turning on those who thought to use this fearsome weapon and destroying them. Its final possessor, Turin, committed suicide with it and it shattered beneath him.
Let that be a warning to anyone who believes they can use a weapon crafted from hatred to achieve anything lasting or good.
Anglachel
First, this is Krugman from today:
UglinessA long and brutal game of "gotcha" at every turn, making every interview into a field strewn with landmines, pretending it is more important to catch a candidate in a verbal slip than to ask about their plans for governing. Most of all, the way in which an arrogant and right-leaning media decided that it would frame the way in which our candidates were presented. This interview was not just trying to trick Hillary into saying something that could be construed as her doubt about Obama's faith, it was also at the same time making his faith (which by definition cannot be known by anyone but the person) into a topic of discussion in the campaign. Go and read some of the comments to this blog post by Krugman. Think about the article by Stanley Fish on Hillary Hatred. Consider the ways in which misogyny is so casually mixed in with political hatred, and the level of fury that spills out across the page. Take seriously the effectiveness of the right to exploit deep fears and prejudices and their shameless zeal to call out the worst in everyone they touch.
Read the first paragraph of this, then read this, and you’ll have the essence of what happened in the Democratic primary campaign
I've waited patiently for several days to see if anything of substance would come out of the much ballyhooed announcement by Larry Johnson about a video that alleges Michelle Obama said something objectionable, possibly using a derogatory racial term. I posted a few cautions, and said I needed to see the evidence before making up my mind. This alleged scandal has been pushed for several weeks now, and there have been several days of explanations, each of them at odds in some way with the others. I've made up my mind on this matter.
It is a ratfucking operation by the Republicans and it has done exactly what it was intended to do - set Democrats at each others' throats, stir up racist and anti-Muslim sentiment, and encourage people to enagage in misogynist attacks on Michelle Obama.
At best, Larry Johnson is being played for a fool by these people. His desire to defeat Obama is coming out of a desire to get back at the radical left of the 60s. Obama is his access point to people like Ayers, Wright and Farrakhan, and he's grabbing for every rock that comes to hand, not paying much attention to the dynamite that is taking its place. That there is little to defend in that group does not excuse the irresponsible conduct by any number of people over at No Quarter. I admit to a certain grim satisfaction that two elements I don't much care for in American political life - the violent nihilists of the Left and their mirror-image Cold Warrior, red-baiting fellow nihilists of the right - are duking it out. Couldn't happen to a better pair. But what is spilling over from this decades old grudge match into the rest of the blogs is pure toxic waste - misogyny, racism and anti-Muslim calumny.
Let's get something clear. I do not give a flying fuck if Michelle Obama did say "whitey" in some video tape from whenever and wherever and with whomever she supposedly said it. Period. I sincerely doubt that anything we finally see will rise to the level of what we have been led to believe happened. Furthermore, I do not care if Michelle Obama is unpleasant, nice as apple pie, indifferent to the world, filled with petty resentment, serene and loving, or anything else about the state of her psyche. I'm willing to wager she is all of those things depending on where she is and who she's talking to, just as every major public female figure I have read about has had her inner soul meticulously dissected before the public eye and has been found wanting. The assault on Michelle Obama is exactly like the assault on Hillary Clinton when Bill was running for the White House. It is mean, vile, sexist, crude, derogatory and beneath contempt.
It has also become the ignition spark for a growing fire of racism in the comments, couched as opposition to Black Liberation Theology and to Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. The agitation for this hatred began on the right explicitly with their attacks on Wright's church, which has been part of the underground rightwing email war against Obama from the start. These are things the spousal unit and I were reading this time last year when it became clear Obama was going to try for a run at the Presidency. Ironically, it probably would have stayed in that sewer through the Democratic primary had not Obama decided that running on racism was a good idea. Once he opened Pandora's box, the Wright stuff began to be lobbed back at him. The connections with Farrakhan and with Tony Rezko have been used to tie him maliciously to Islam (and to rabble rouse about that religion in exactly the same way as I see people using "Israel" to indulge in some not very subtle anti-Semitism), pretending in wide-eyed innocence that it's all about his
"terrorist" ties.
Just in the way that misogyny made it easy to engage in the purely personal classist warfare and white-on-white bigotry against Hillary, misogyny is making it easy to batter Michelle Obama and slide in the other racial and religious attacks as well, all aimed at stirring up the most crude and hateful impulses in the readers.
Over the last week, I have watched this toxic brew spread out from No Quarter and into other blogs. The anger over the RBC decision and over the hostile and dismissive way Hillary has been treated in the last week of campaigning no doubt made it easier to rationalize dipping into the uglier phrases, the barely concealed slurs, the code words that Americans always use to describe the reviled Other when they are angry and want to rip something down.
We are seeing within the primary itself the misogynistic, racist, religion-bashing attacks that everyone expected to see in the general. The difference is that these accusations are coming out of Democratic mouths and are aimed at our Democratic candidates.
This is doing the Right's work for them.
I'm not giving "our" side a pass on this. No matter how unfair or vile the attacks on Hillary, she has never responded with anything but class. She has never stooped to "But they did it, too!" When people on her campaign tried to use the smears, she canned them.
I have not changed my mind on Obama as a candidate. He ran a dirty campaign, he had every external advantage and the DNC still had to rig the system to shove him across the line ahead of her by a nose. I have also not changed my mind about the wrong way to conduct any kind of political campaign, which is to employ the tactics of the Right. I will have a longer post this weekend on that point.
My screen name, Anglachel, refers to a sword in the Tolkien fantasy world. It was forged from meteoric iron by someone with a deep hatred of those around him, and it took on the deadly, twisted nature of Eol. It slew anyone who tried to weild it, turning on those who thought to use this fearsome weapon and destroying them. Its final possessor, Turin, committed suicide with it and it shattered beneath him.
Let that be a warning to anyone who believes they can use a weapon crafted from hatred to achieve anything lasting or good.
Anglachel
Friday, May 23, 2008
Jackals
I'm reading the reports on the mendacious attacks the Bogger Boyz are making on Hillary by completely perverting her comments about RFK.
Rather than weigh in on the current idiocy (which is being handled very nicely by Riverdaughter & Co. over on the Confluence. If you have not read that blog, stop, go there, read and bookmark. I'll be here when you're done.) what I've done is go back in time, to the summer of 2006, when Obama was not such a darling to Left Blogistan. The blow up occurred right around the time of Yearly Kos. Here are a few links:
Rather than weigh in on the current idiocy (which is being handled very nicely by Riverdaughter & Co. over on the Confluence. If you have not read that blog, stop, go there, read and bookmark. I'll be here when you're done.) what I've done is go back in time, to the summer of 2006, when Obama was not such a darling to Left Blogistan. The blow up occurred right around the time of Yearly Kos. Here are a few links:
- Entitlement and the Deserving Middle Class - June 29. The fury of the netroots over Obama's was making itself known. I prefaced a longer article about Edwards' economic arguments with reference to the spew.
- Adopting the Frames of the Right - June 30. This is my initial commentary on the brutal attacks launched at Obama for a speech he gave about the role of religious belief in politics.
- Battle for the Entrenched Power Broker Positions - July 04. While not directly about Obama, it is a commentary on just what game the netroots movers and shakers were playing.
- Reimagining the Beloved Community - July 05. My commentary on the commentary of Kevin Drum and Ed Kilgore on the attacks upon Obama by the blogosphere.
- Over the Edge They Go - July 06. Why I gave up reading Digby a long time ago. This assault on Boxer was, for me, a defining moment in understanding the real intent of the Blogger Boyz (and, yes, Digby is one of the "Boyz"), which was to destroy any politician who, in their eyes, was connected to "the DLC", which is their shorthand for the Clintons.
- The Curious Case of Obama Bashing - July 15. A short note on the optics of what the netroots was continuing to do to Obama, fully two weeks after his original speech.
What is my point here? Namely, that the Left Blogosphere has always behaved like this, they have always swarmed and spewed at their favorite target of hate, the Clintons, and that their embrace of Obama is purely instrumental. They don't give a damn if he can win the general. They are obsessed with preventing the Clintons from returning to power. If he can do that, then they'll be back to bashing him since he will have served his useful purpose.
My other point is to make very deliberate note of the straightforwardly racist sneers aimed at Obama. He was called "Lieberman's boy" (Hell-lo? WTF?!? Racist and gay bashing in one insult?), a demonstration of the failure of affirmative action, accused of "sucking up to massa", and a whole host of other hideous insults in the same blogs where he is now lauded as some kind of demi-god. This was also the election season where Jane Hamsher of FDL posted and refused to take down a photoshopped image of Joe Lieberman in black face standing next to Bill Clinton. The willingness of these bloggers who are so offended by Hillary's "racism" to shovel it out without apology is beyond hypocrisy.
They are jackals.
Anglachel
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Stalemate
I'm watching the Indiana results carefully, though I'm pretty confident Hillary will win. I also think the margin in North Carolina will narrow, given the counties that have not yet reported in.
The exit polls in each state reflect the condition of the Democratic primary electorate - Obama gets a super-majority of AA votes which makes up for his weakness with other voters. The "youth" turnout was not that big. The trend that spells out the party's fate in November continues to hold, which is that Hillary is consistently winning white males votes. These are the people who are most likely to defect to McCain in November, and they are already indicating that they don't much care for Obama.
It has come down to race, though not in the way the Blogger Boyz want to admit. It is about the wine track candidate getting a boost from AA voters, not any surge of anti-black racism on the part of working class voters. There may be some white backlash against Obama now, but that is a direct result of the way his campaign hs dissed working class voters by painting them as racists, as well as his own dirty laundry beginning to be aired.
The wine track candidate has been a consistently losing bet for the party since Stevenson. Kennedy barely eked out a victory (and there are reasons to believe he didn't win the vote), and Jimmy Carter was simply an anomaly, though it is telling that he was center-left southern technocrat. Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry were more centrist than the competition, but they hewed to the Yankee technocratic line rather than try to connect to the increasingly disaffected working class. Gore won the popular vote but lost the election because he tried to be more Bill Bradly than Bill Clinton. The "hardcore" wine track competitors - Dean, Bradley, Hart, Tsongas, Brown, Teddy Kennedy - were never seriously competitive even in the primaries because they simply did not appeal to people for whom politics was more than an intellectual enterprise. Candidates who make voters feel both vulnerable and stupid just aren't going to go very far.
There are two reasons why the hardcore winetrack candidate is winning this year. What Obama did to the situation was unify the AA vote behind a single candidate by virtue of his race. Obama is winning because he is black. Aside from that one quality, he would have been polling down with Dennis Kucinich in the primaries. The other reason is because Hillary Clinton is running. If Hillary had not been in the lineup, all the party power brokers would have been behind Edwards and Obama would have been offered a VP slot. He offers nothing of substance on pocketbook issues, doesn't appeal to working class voters in the slightest, and is carrying more incendiary political baggage than you can shake a stick at. Were it not for his AA support, he would not be competitive.
Before anyone spouts off in the comments, let me make it clear that I don't consider AA support of Obama to be pernicious. Electorally frustrating, yes, but, unlike the Hillary Haters who want to attribute the worst possible motives to her supporters, I don't think that is so of the majority Obama's black supporters. They see an opportunity to vote for a candidate who reflects them, and they will do so, no matter the odds. Given my unwavering support of Hillary despite the long nomination odds, I can't really cry foul on someone else's supporters who feel just as strongly as I do. Obama's campaign is certainly doing pernicious race-baiting, but mostly to initimidate critics and shame wavering white voters. I don't think it's earning him more than a few slivers of votes from the AA community, and is probably costing him more votes on the whole when white attrition is counted against black gains.
The problem, of course, is that Obama is having less and less appeal beyond his unique coalition as time goes on. His political baggage is pure gold for Republican ratfucking operations as we already see in their attacks on politicians who endorsed him. He has insulted the working class voters (who are not just white) the party must hold to defeat the Republicans over and over again, his class snobbery on display with some new gaffe almost every week.
So, what now? Local variations will give supporters on either side arguments about relative strength, but the larger picture is that Obama is losing 60% of white voters within his own party, let alone across parties. His scorched earth campaign to claim white racism as the sole and overwhelming cause of his losses puts the party between the Devil and the deep blue sea. He has alienated voters of all ethnicities by forcing the campaign into a black/white racial divide, angering Democrats who are voting against his lack of substantive policies, not his skin color (in truth, at this point, the only things about him that appeal to me are his skin color and his proposed Cuba policy), and antagonizing AAs with his claim that white politicians are conspiring to deny him the nomination, which will make a significant number stay home if he is not the nominee. The political question for me is whether, should he lose the nomination, will he support Hillary? If he does, Democrats win. If he doesn't, Democrats lose.
The party is at a stalemate now. Neither candidate will win with just pledged delegates. Super delegates will break it in favor of one candidate or the other.
Do we want to win in November or not?
Anglachel
The exit polls in each state reflect the condition of the Democratic primary electorate - Obama gets a super-majority of AA votes which makes up for his weakness with other voters. The "youth" turnout was not that big. The trend that spells out the party's fate in November continues to hold, which is that Hillary is consistently winning white males votes. These are the people who are most likely to defect to McCain in November, and they are already indicating that they don't much care for Obama.
It has come down to race, though not in the way the Blogger Boyz want to admit. It is about the wine track candidate getting a boost from AA voters, not any surge of anti-black racism on the part of working class voters. There may be some white backlash against Obama now, but that is a direct result of the way his campaign hs dissed working class voters by painting them as racists, as well as his own dirty laundry beginning to be aired.
The wine track candidate has been a consistently losing bet for the party since Stevenson. Kennedy barely eked out a victory (and there are reasons to believe he didn't win the vote), and Jimmy Carter was simply an anomaly, though it is telling that he was center-left southern technocrat. Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry were more centrist than the competition, but they hewed to the Yankee technocratic line rather than try to connect to the increasingly disaffected working class. Gore won the popular vote but lost the election because he tried to be more Bill Bradly than Bill Clinton. The "hardcore" wine track competitors - Dean, Bradley, Hart, Tsongas, Brown, Teddy Kennedy - were never seriously competitive even in the primaries because they simply did not appeal to people for whom politics was more than an intellectual enterprise. Candidates who make voters feel both vulnerable and stupid just aren't going to go very far.
There are two reasons why the hardcore winetrack candidate is winning this year. What Obama did to the situation was unify the AA vote behind a single candidate by virtue of his race. Obama is winning because he is black. Aside from that one quality, he would have been polling down with Dennis Kucinich in the primaries. The other reason is because Hillary Clinton is running. If Hillary had not been in the lineup, all the party power brokers would have been behind Edwards and Obama would have been offered a VP slot. He offers nothing of substance on pocketbook issues, doesn't appeal to working class voters in the slightest, and is carrying more incendiary political baggage than you can shake a stick at. Were it not for his AA support, he would not be competitive.
Before anyone spouts off in the comments, let me make it clear that I don't consider AA support of Obama to be pernicious. Electorally frustrating, yes, but, unlike the Hillary Haters who want to attribute the worst possible motives to her supporters, I don't think that is so of the majority Obama's black supporters. They see an opportunity to vote for a candidate who reflects them, and they will do so, no matter the odds. Given my unwavering support of Hillary despite the long nomination odds, I can't really cry foul on someone else's supporters who feel just as strongly as I do. Obama's campaign is certainly doing pernicious race-baiting, but mostly to initimidate critics and shame wavering white voters. I don't think it's earning him more than a few slivers of votes from the AA community, and is probably costing him more votes on the whole when white attrition is counted against black gains.
The problem, of course, is that Obama is having less and less appeal beyond his unique coalition as time goes on. His political baggage is pure gold for Republican ratfucking operations as we already see in their attacks on politicians who endorsed him. He has insulted the working class voters (who are not just white) the party must hold to defeat the Republicans over and over again, his class snobbery on display with some new gaffe almost every week.
So, what now? Local variations will give supporters on either side arguments about relative strength, but the larger picture is that Obama is losing 60% of white voters within his own party, let alone across parties. His scorched earth campaign to claim white racism as the sole and overwhelming cause of his losses puts the party between the Devil and the deep blue sea. He has alienated voters of all ethnicities by forcing the campaign into a black/white racial divide, angering Democrats who are voting against his lack of substantive policies, not his skin color (in truth, at this point, the only things about him that appeal to me are his skin color and his proposed Cuba policy), and antagonizing AAs with his claim that white politicians are conspiring to deny him the nomination, which will make a significant number stay home if he is not the nominee. The political question for me is whether, should he lose the nomination, will he support Hillary? If he does, Democrats win. If he doesn't, Democrats lose.
The party is at a stalemate now. Neither candidate will win with just pledged delegates. Super delegates will break it in favor of one candidate or the other.
Do we want to win in November or not?
Anglachel
Friday, May 02, 2008
The Whiteness of the Whale
When historians and political scientists look back at this election, they will not primarily be concerned with who won. The phenomenon to be explained will be the unhinged attacks upon Hillary Clinton from the Left. See eRiposte's write up here for another discussion of this phenomenon. The war being waged against Hillary from the Left goes far beyond the immediate campaign contest – the primary has become the vehicle through which the Left’s hatred of the Clintons can be expressed in a unified manner. That the Right should hate the Clintons is unsurprising, but what can possibly explain the fury of the Left with Bill and Hillary Clinton?
There is nothing in the political acts or policies of either of these people sufficient to explain this reaction. If the segment of the Left assaulting the Clintons was merely the disaffected and inchoate fringes, people with a single issue that no one except their own preferred candidate can satisfy, or obsessed with ethical purity to such a degree that they will not accept that politics are necessary and every political act is looked at as an example of corruption, then there would be an explanation. Cranks tend to glom onto celebrities as objects of adoration or hatred. But the people objecting most strenuously to the Clintons are politically indistinguishable from them. The alleged political sins of Bill and Hillary are shared by other politicians who are not subject to the scorched earth assaults the Clintons endure. Among the power brokers, the attackers are often colleagues, appointees and protégés. At a policy or philosophical level, these are differences of degree, not of kind.
It is a phenomenon uniquely demarcated by class. Upper-middle and upper class professionals with significant amounts of college education are the overwhelming majority of the people launching broadsides against the Clintons. It has a distinct geographical structure as well, being more likely to appear north of the Mason-Dixon than south of it.
It differs this election cycle than when Bill ran for President in that it is voiced more openly and because the vitriol is being poured onto Hillary Clinton voters as well as on the candidate herself. The attack upon rank and file supporters is, I think, the major way in which CDS on the Left differs from that on the Right. I cannot name a time in all the past presidential elections I can remember (1976 being the oldest) that entire blocks of voters were so thoroughly condemned for their candidate choice. It is a battle within the party, not against external foes, and it is about class. Or, rather, it is about a fantasy of class and culpability.
It is not a mistake that racism is the charge being thrown at Hillary, despite the utter insanity of the claim, despite Obama admitting in the Nevada debate that, yes, his campaign was deliberately spreading the lie that she and her campaign were engaging in racist attacks. In the liberal imagination, racism is the marker of “white trash”, itself shorthand for the organization of the white world into the superior educated class and the inferior hicks. All southerners are hicks, even the educated ones. All southerners are simply Trent Lott, George Wallace and Strom Thurmond rolled into one. All “uneducated” (i.e., lacking at least a BA or BS from a notable school) white northerners are “Bunkers”. Anyone appealing to such people is a not-so-closeted racist, and their entire agenda is to reinstitute Jim Crow, if not return to slavery.
Why this psychotic and self-defeating projection onto the working class? It is the deep guilt of the liberal upper class that we know, every last miserable one of us, that our privilege is due to centuries of white supremacy and to the informal, unspoken, but pervasive advantage our skin color and behavioral patterns gives us in this society. It is our Moby Dick, the whale we pursue obsessively through political seas, frantic to have material proof that we are innocent of the crimes of our nation.
The Democratic Party was the party of slavery and civil war in the 19th century. It was the party of Jim Crow in the early 20th century. The New Deal set it on the path to renouncing that legacy through the mid-part of the last century, and it was a brutal passage. Instead of reimagining the South and what it could become, the Northeast elite who had taken over the leadership simply renounced it – you will be like us or you can get out. When desegregation came to the Northeast and the Midwest, the contempt for “The South” was transferred easily to the working class ethnic whites who resisted this change. Archie Bunker became an eternal truth rather than a thought exercise, a denunciation of the unchangeable cretin in front of the TV instead of a call to reflect on how we become what we are and how, despite ourselves, we can find our common humanity. Most of all, the determined demonization of working class whites, especially those with Southern connections, allows the upper class elites to turn a blind eye to the way in which they are the biggest beneficiaries of the centuries of racism in the nation. There is a growing group within the liberal elite who wishes to jettison “The South” entirely, leaving the working class immiserated and isolated, rather than face up to the obligation of the party to complete the task before it. That task is to create the conditions under which racism is no longer something that can be exploited for electoral gain or needed as a survival tactic in deteriorating and demeaning socio-economic conditions.
The violent rejection of the Clintons on the Left is a rejection of “The South” and the working class by the Stevensonian elite, who see the success of Bill the “Bubba” as both a threat to their power and a repudiation of their policies and actions since 1968. They want to see themselves as simultaneously co-victims with AAs of white supremacy and also as the moral(istic) saviors of the oppressed, redeeming their part of the white population from the sin of racism. (Read the incomparable Bob Somerby’s write up of this phenomenon in his latest post.) Bill Clinton provided a different vision of how to move the party and nation forward, one that refused demonization, and this shook them to their ineffective foundations. The Clintons unsettle the comfortable arrangement between the northeastern elite and the southern revanchists (the Democrats and the Republicans having exchanged those roles since the New Deal), insisting on the need to materially improve the lives of the bulk of the nation and not sit around waving a moralistic finger at people who like to shoot guns and go to church every Sunday.
The assault on the Clintons has no basis in policy or political philosophy. It is an attack on uppity white trash who dares to succeed in the world without assimilating into the ruling elite, and for the added insult of being adored by the nation precisely for their common connections. The only thing I can compare to the single-minded determination of the liberal elite to destroy the Clintons regardless of the collateral damage to party and nation is George W. Bush’s obsession with talking out Saddam Hussein, though lacking even the level of justification collected for that vendetta.
Reading the increasingly unhinged and incoherent ravings of the elite against Hillary Clinton, the calls for her murder, the fabricated videos “proving” the racism of her campaign and associates, the hysterical screams that she must get out now before she inflicts more damage on the party, and the assertions that anyone who votes for this candidate is nothing but a racist, I am reminded of one of the great descriptions of obsession ever set down:
Anglachel
There is nothing in the political acts or policies of either of these people sufficient to explain this reaction. If the segment of the Left assaulting the Clintons was merely the disaffected and inchoate fringes, people with a single issue that no one except their own preferred candidate can satisfy, or obsessed with ethical purity to such a degree that they will not accept that politics are necessary and every political act is looked at as an example of corruption, then there would be an explanation. Cranks tend to glom onto celebrities as objects of adoration or hatred. But the people objecting most strenuously to the Clintons are politically indistinguishable from them. The alleged political sins of Bill and Hillary are shared by other politicians who are not subject to the scorched earth assaults the Clintons endure. Among the power brokers, the attackers are often colleagues, appointees and protégés. At a policy or philosophical level, these are differences of degree, not of kind.
It is a phenomenon uniquely demarcated by class. Upper-middle and upper class professionals with significant amounts of college education are the overwhelming majority of the people launching broadsides against the Clintons. It has a distinct geographical structure as well, being more likely to appear north of the Mason-Dixon than south of it.
It differs this election cycle than when Bill ran for President in that it is voiced more openly and because the vitriol is being poured onto Hillary Clinton voters as well as on the candidate herself. The attack upon rank and file supporters is, I think, the major way in which CDS on the Left differs from that on the Right. I cannot name a time in all the past presidential elections I can remember (1976 being the oldest) that entire blocks of voters were so thoroughly condemned for their candidate choice. It is a battle within the party, not against external foes, and it is about class. Or, rather, it is about a fantasy of class and culpability.
It is not a mistake that racism is the charge being thrown at Hillary, despite the utter insanity of the claim, despite Obama admitting in the Nevada debate that, yes, his campaign was deliberately spreading the lie that she and her campaign were engaging in racist attacks. In the liberal imagination, racism is the marker of “white trash”, itself shorthand for the organization of the white world into the superior educated class and the inferior hicks. All southerners are hicks, even the educated ones. All southerners are simply Trent Lott, George Wallace and Strom Thurmond rolled into one. All “uneducated” (i.e., lacking at least a BA or BS from a notable school) white northerners are “Bunkers”. Anyone appealing to such people is a not-so-closeted racist, and their entire agenda is to reinstitute Jim Crow, if not return to slavery.
Why this psychotic and self-defeating projection onto the working class? It is the deep guilt of the liberal upper class that we know, every last miserable one of us, that our privilege is due to centuries of white supremacy and to the informal, unspoken, but pervasive advantage our skin color and behavioral patterns gives us in this society. It is our Moby Dick, the whale we pursue obsessively through political seas, frantic to have material proof that we are innocent of the crimes of our nation.
The Democratic Party was the party of slavery and civil war in the 19th century. It was the party of Jim Crow in the early 20th century. The New Deal set it on the path to renouncing that legacy through the mid-part of the last century, and it was a brutal passage. Instead of reimagining the South and what it could become, the Northeast elite who had taken over the leadership simply renounced it – you will be like us or you can get out. When desegregation came to the Northeast and the Midwest, the contempt for “The South” was transferred easily to the working class ethnic whites who resisted this change. Archie Bunker became an eternal truth rather than a thought exercise, a denunciation of the unchangeable cretin in front of the TV instead of a call to reflect on how we become what we are and how, despite ourselves, we can find our common humanity. Most of all, the determined demonization of working class whites, especially those with Southern connections, allows the upper class elites to turn a blind eye to the way in which they are the biggest beneficiaries of the centuries of racism in the nation. There is a growing group within the liberal elite who wishes to jettison “The South” entirely, leaving the working class immiserated and isolated, rather than face up to the obligation of the party to complete the task before it. That task is to create the conditions under which racism is no longer something that can be exploited for electoral gain or needed as a survival tactic in deteriorating and demeaning socio-economic conditions.
The violent rejection of the Clintons on the Left is a rejection of “The South” and the working class by the Stevensonian elite, who see the success of Bill the “Bubba” as both a threat to their power and a repudiation of their policies and actions since 1968. They want to see themselves as simultaneously co-victims with AAs of white supremacy and also as the moral(istic) saviors of the oppressed, redeeming their part of the white population from the sin of racism. (Read the incomparable Bob Somerby’s write up of this phenomenon in his latest post.) Bill Clinton provided a different vision of how to move the party and nation forward, one that refused demonization, and this shook them to their ineffective foundations. The Clintons unsettle the comfortable arrangement between the northeastern elite and the southern revanchists (the Democrats and the Republicans having exchanged those roles since the New Deal), insisting on the need to materially improve the lives of the bulk of the nation and not sit around waving a moralistic finger at people who like to shoot guns and go to church every Sunday.
The assault on the Clintons has no basis in policy or political philosophy. It is an attack on uppity white trash who dares to succeed in the world without assimilating into the ruling elite, and for the added insult of being adored by the nation precisely for their common connections. The only thing I can compare to the single-minded determination of the liberal elite to destroy the Clintons regardless of the collateral damage to party and nation is George W. Bush’s obsession with talking out Saddam Hussein, though lacking even the level of justification collected for that vendetta.
Reading the increasingly unhinged and incoherent ravings of the elite against Hillary Clinton, the calls for her murder, the fabricated videos “proving” the racism of her campaign and associates, the hysterical screams that she must get out now before she inflicts more damage on the party, and the assertions that anyone who votes for this candidate is nothing but a racist, I am reminded of one of the great descriptions of obsession ever set down:
And we all remember how that story ended.I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge. …
Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil;- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it. …
How it was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man's ire- by what evil magic their souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be- what the White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life,- all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go. The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does not feel the irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand still? For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and the place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill.
Anglachel
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