Stereotypes, Facts and Ideals

Paul Krugman's Friday column is up on the New York Times - Clinging to a Sterotype. He hits all the right notes:

Will Barack Obama’s now famous “bitter” quote turn out to have been a big deal politically? Frankly, I have no idea.

But here’s a different question: was Mr. Obama right?

Mr. Obama’s comments combined assertions about economics, sociology and voting behavior. In each case, his assertion was mostly if not entirely wrong.

Start with the economics. Mr. Obama: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration.”

There are, indeed, towns where the mill closed during the 1980s and nothing has replaced it. But the suggestion that the American heartland suffered equally during the Clinton and Bush years is deeply misleading.

In fact, the Clinton years were very good for working Americans in the Midwest, where real median household income soared before crashing after 2000. (You can see the numbers at my blog, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com.)

***

Next, the sociology: “And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

The crucial word here isn’t “bitter,” it’s “cling.” Does economic hardship drive people to seek solace in firearms, God and xenophobia?

It’s true that people in poor states are more likely to attend church regularly than residents of rich states. This might seem to indicate that faith is indeed a response to economic adversity.

But this result largely reflects the fact that southern states are both church-going and poor; some poor states outside the South, like Maine and Montana, are actually less religious than Connecticut. Furthermore, within poor states, people with low incomes are actually less likely to attend church than those with high incomes. (The correlation runs the opposite way in rich states.)

Over all, none of this suggests that people turn to God out of economic frustration.

***

It’s true that Americans who attend church regularly are more likely to vote Republican. But contrary to the stereotype, this relationship is weak at low incomes but strong among high-income voters. That is, to the extent that religion helps the G.O.P., it’s not by convincing the working class to vote against its own interests, but by producing supermajorities among the evangelical affluent.

So why have Republicans won so many elections? In his book, “Unequal Democracy,” Mr. Bartels shows that “the shift of the Solid South from Democratic to Republican control in the wake of the civil rights movement” explains all — literally all — of the Republican success story.

Does it matter that Mr. Obama has embraced an incorrect theory about what motivates working-class voters? His campaign certainly hasn’t been based on Mr. Frank’s book, which calls for a renewed focus on economic issues as a way to win back the working class.

Indeed, the book concludes with a blistering attack on Democrats who cater to “affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues” while “dropping the class language that once distinguished them sharply from Republicans.” Doesn’t this sound a bit like the Obama campaign?

Anyway, the important point is that working-class Americans do vote on economic issues — and can be swayed by a politician who offers real answers to their problems.

And one more thing: let’s hope that once Mr. Obama is no longer running against someone named Clinton, he’ll stop denigrating the very good economic record of the only Democratic administration most Americans remember.

People are not casting their votes for the reasons the Blogger Boyz and The Precious claim. Indeed, if anyone is voting out of ungrounded and consoling beliefs, it is the Obamacans, with no solid platform, on the basis of undefined "hope", in violent emotional reaction to a powerful female mother figure, with enormous amounts of contempt and bile for those who do not view the world through their eyes.

They take solace in a fantasy that Obama will be a liberal, even as he sucks up to Republicans and has conservative, opportunistic advisors. They like to think that their vote for a black guy proves they are not racist, just they way some people think attending church makes them Christians. They attribute to their candidate qualities not in evidence, and project onto anyone who fails to adulate Obama the worst possible motives, even going so far as to invent family members who work for the evil lying bitch. They espouse violence against their fellow Democrats, saying they want to batter Hillary, making death threats to black super delegates who do not declare for Obama, and harassing ordinary travelers who show favor to Hillary.

And now, today, Lord Kos himself, a former Republican, declares that Hillary (and by extension those who support her) isn't really a Democrat, trying to delegitimize the political choice of well over half of the party, just as his former political fellow travelers have tried to do to vast swaths of the American public - gays, feminists, blacks, immigrants, Jews, the working class.

Sorry, Markos. I am a Democrat and my acts support my ideology. It is you who falls short of the Democratic ideal.

Anglachel

Myth of the Bitter White Working Class

Paul Krugman put up a blog post today entitled Clinging to the Data, in which he basically demolishes the claim that A) poor religious whites vote Republican and B) Midwesterners were economically disadvantaged under Bill Clinton and, thus, are "bitter". He promises a full article on the basic data presented in the blog post. Also in that blog post is a link to a PDF of a paper by Larry Bartels of Princeton, which he gave at the 2005 American Political Science Association conference. It is called "What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?" and it pretty much demolishes the "Obama was just badly saying Thomas Frank's thesis from his book, which we all know is true," bullshit being voiced by the Blogger Boyz. This is research Krugman used when writing his own Conscience of a Liberal, which also puts the lie to many assumptions about white voting behavior held by the out-of-touch Obamacan elite who pretend to be Democrats. Here is the summary page of the paper:

• Has the white working class abandoned the Democratic Party? No. White voters in the bottom third of the income distribution have actually become more reliably Democratic in presidential elections over the past half-century, while middle- and upper-income white voters have trended Republican. Low-income whites have become less Democratic in their partisan identifications, but at a slower rate than more affluent whites – and that trend is entirely confined to the South, where Democratic identification was artificially inflated by the one-party system of the Jim Crow era.
• Has the white working class become more conservative? No. The average views of low-income whites have remained virtually unchanged over the past 30 years. (A pro-choice shift on abortion in the 1970s and ‘80s has been partially reversed since the early 1990s.) Their positions relative to more affluent white voters – generally less liberal on social issues and less conservative on economic issues – have also remained virtually unchanged.
• Do working class "moral values" trump economics? No. Social issues (including abortion) are less strongly related to party identification and presidential votes than economic issues are, and that is even more true for whites in the bottom third of the income distribution than for more affluent whites. Moreover, while social issue preferences have become more strongly related to presidential votes among middle- and high-income whites, there is no evidence of a corresponding trend among low-income whites.
• Are religious voters distracted from economic issues? No. The partisan attachments and presidential votes of frequent church-goers and people who say religion provides "a great deal" of guidance in their lives are much more strongly related to their views about economic issues than to their views about social issues. For church-goers as for non-church-goers, partisanship and voting behavior are primarily shaped by economic issues, not cultural issues.

What is the take away from this? First and foremost, that if you want to know where defections to the Republicans have occured in the Democratic Party, look to the white former power brokers in the South, those who profited from segregation and who defected to the Republicans when the Democratic Party firmly placed itself on the side of human rights and equality before the law. These are not poor yokels, hillbillies and rubes. These are educated, social and economically influential people, the Republican counterparts of the Obamacan supporters among Democrats.

As I said in In Praise of Cities, it was the ethnic white working class of the northern cities and industrial heartland who helped wrest power away from the segregationist, revanchist power elite of the South, the Strom Thurmands and Trent Lotts of this world. Did they intend Black equality? At the time, probably not. I'm not looking at anyone with rose colored glasses. Did the grounds on which they were brought into the party as participants who exercized increasing influence, mostly through unions, set the stage for the party to confront its racist core and forced it to come down on the side of equality? Yes.

The other big takeaway here is that the working class does vote its economic interests. Furthermore, their religious views may be more closely tied to their economic stances and voting preferences than to their social views. I know a lot of working class Catholics, for example, who are staunchly anti-abortion but who always vote Democratic because of their commitment to good works and social justice. This is what we are seeing among Hillary supporters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey and so forth - she's got a plan to get us out of the economic shithole BushCo has dropped us into, and they trust that she knows what she's talking about, mostly because she will stand there in front of them, take their questions and describe in detail what she will do.

The basic problem is that two similar reactions to frustration - anger and bitterness - are getting conflated and transposed in an attempt to explain away Obama's failure at the polls. There's a lot of angry Democrats out there. We have a fuck of a lot of things to be angry about over the way Bush and Cheney have betrayed and brutalized this nation. There's anger about the economy and predatory lending. There's anger about rapacious corporations and the exploitation of workers around the world. There's anger about being lied into a war and watching our nation's reputation demolished. The ranking of which issue is the most important changes with the constituency and the region.

What we are seeing is the way in which Obamacan bitterness over not getting what they want (and a pony) results in them crudely projecting their biases and fears onto people who are simply voting their interests. Bitterness is a reaction to having been stymied or betrayed, and is not an automatic reaction to having to work hard. I suspect a lot of working class people, regardless of color or gender, look at the shit life throws them pretty much the way I do, which is to sigh, daydream a bit about winning the lottery, and then just getting on with the business of making do with what life has handed you. It's only if you feel entitled to something you haven't received or burdened by things you do not deserve that you become bitter. Anger can be empowering. I have never encountered bitterness that is not corrosive and destructive.

Obama is projecting his own bitterness at being denied a win, attributing hateful and defamatory intentions to those who will not provide him what he believes he deserves. I'm sure there are people out there who won't vote for him because of the color of his skin. I know a few. They are all Republicans. Empirical evidence does not support his claims about those who won't vote for him, no matter how loud GKJM and Kos scream about the horrible racists supporting the horrible Hillary Mommy Monster.

Yes, Precious, it is possible for you to lose because people like Hillary better. You're likeable enough, but we want our president to actually be qualified for the job.

Anglachel

Notes for Commenters

It's been a while since I said this and there are a bunch of new commenters, so:

• This blog is my jaundiced and often tendentious opinion. If you don't like my opinion, your Back button is located in the upper left corner of your browser.
• I very rarely respond to comments directly. Comments about my cat or my house are more likely to get replies than anything else. Lack of replies should not be interpreted to mean agreement, disagreement or anything else.
• Conditions under which a comment may be deleted - it's a double-post, it is spam, it says something obnoxious about me, another commenter or is just obnoxious in general. I decide what is obnoxious.
• When you post a comment, you may get challenged, vigorously, by other commenters. Have fun.
• No one but me votes anyone off the island. You post your opinion and you take your lumps.
• Just because I say something you want to hear does not mean I agree with you.
• I do read all the comments. Thank you for posting. I learn a hell of a lot from the comments here.

Anglachel

Party Crashers

I have been up since 3:00 AM managing a product launch for my company and I'm blotto. I took a few minutes while trying to come down off the adrenaline buzz to read a few blogs and see what was on people's minds. This post is written on an incredible sugar & caffeine high and on only three hours of sleep. I'll try for something more coherent another day.

What I see is that something I've been blogging about since the 2006 electoral cycle (go read some of my archive posts and see) has finally sunk in - the unifying principle of netroots places like Daily Kos, FDL, TPM and HuffPo *is* destroying the Clintons as political actors in this country. Whatever they may have started out to do, this is what they have become.

What is more, as BTD at TalkLeft has been discussing over the last few weeks, these people have jackshit zero loyalty to the Democratic Party, even as they try to seize control of the power (and money, never forget the money) structure of the organization. If the party will not join them in political fratricide against some of the most loyal of party loyalists, then they will gladly destroy the party.

These are the same people who trashed Obama as part of the Clinton/DLC cabal in 2006. Was there a lick of truth in their words about him then? No. Is there any greater honesty in their adulation of the Precious now? Ha! They like Obama for the same reason Karl Rove likes the guy - he's their Clinton killer. Edwards didn't do it, so chuck that loser and his diseased wife (how dare she say anything nice about Hitlery! Just shows Elizabeth was always a pandering bitch...) over the side 'cuz now we got us some real ammo against those miserable HillBillies, yessiree Bob!

One of the reasons I refuse to relinquish the Democratic Party to these nasty little bastards is because they have nothing planned for the party except to use it as a tool for acting out their resentment and infantile rage. They don't even have the coherence of the Movement Conservatives who sure as shit know how to leverage power, even if it is in the pursuit of evil. This is why I named the netroots Jacobins, not democrats or liberals. As shown by their willingness to throw everything they allegedly stand for (health care, social security, defending the working class, intelligent economic policy) out the window for the chance to act out their tribal obsessions (Hmm, isn't that what Obama and his defenders accuse ethnic white voters of doing, even when those voters are choosing a candidate who will best benefit their material interests?), these cultural elitists show their stripes. As I've said before, they can afford to vote their pique and not their pocketbook, since they do just fine under Republican regimes.

These people are the Left's mirror image of the Movement Conservatives, not their opponents. They divide the Left for their own emotional satisfaction, and regard the party rank and file as internal enemies. And, like adolescent narcissists everywhere, they will blame their inevitable defeats on those who tried to counsel political wisdom.

Anglachel

In Praise of Cities

I'm inspired by a blog post by Paul Krugman:

I was born in a big town …

OK, actually I was born in Albany, and grew up on Long Island. But here’s my question: I understand why it’s political poison to show disrespect for small-town values — dignity is precious to all of us, and often trumps material interest. But why is it OK to disrespect big city values, even to suggest — as Bush has — that big-city dwellers aren’t part of the “real America”?

I mean, I get a lump in my throat when visiting the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. The big-city immigrant experience is as much a part of what made America as the rural, small-town experience. It deserves the same degree of respect

I was born in San Francisco, lived in the Bay Area long enough to be tear gassed several times by then-Governor Ronald Reagan, and grew to adulthood in a rural area of Washington state. I did travel around the country quite a bit and even took a long trip to Europe while in high school (putting me one up on Barry), but mostly it was mailboxes, ditches at the side of the road and riding the horse everywhere.

I was never happier than when I ditched that backwater and went to New York City. Culture shock doesn't begin to describe what I felt, at first revulsed and then fascinated and finally in love with this incredible hodge-podge of humanity. I might have acclimated sooner had I not been attending grad school (a soul killing experience in any location), but I love New York in a way that goes beyond the rational. I was there, watching the smoke and hearing the sirens the first time those bastards attacked the WTC, and I sat, glued to my computer, sobbing, when the second attack happened, outraged at the assault on my city.

New York, capital of the world.

Krugman touches on something in his post that I think gets to the heart of what it means to be a Democrat and a way of understanding particularistic values that does not denigrate, though it darnwell is going to judge. The disdain we've been reading lately from the Obamacan crowd, the dismissal of non-Obama voters as nothing but racist, ill-educated, narrow minded, parochial idiots who are not quite fully human is the inverse of the bile spewed by the Right against dirty cities with their "dangerous underclass", its welfare queens, the vile and perverted sybarites, the wicked liberals who deserved the punishment of 9/11 raining fire and brimstone down from the heavens upon their Godless heads.

There is a reason for the phrase "city air makes free," and that is where there is urbanity, the combination of proximity and anonymity, where wealth can be garnered and the world made anew through imagination and perspiration, there is a place for those who don't fit or can't make it back home. A place for gays and feminists and people of fluid origins and inchoate beliefs. You learn to hold your own in the hurly-burly of the city. I want to be sure in our criticism of elitism that we do not thoughtlessly fall into uncritical valorization of the "heartland" that strengthens Republican demonization of that urbanity. Lest we forget, Matthew Shepard was crucified on a fence in Wyoming, James Byrd was dragged to his death in Texas. Those states are red with the blood of their own citizens.

Pulling in the threads of Krugman, Lind and Somerby, what binds them into a coherent Democratic narrative is respect for the person without giving anyone a pass for denigrating others. It's giving people enough respect to say that what they think is wrong, and not condescend to some kind of vulgar Marxist dismissal of them as ignorant rubes, or else rail against them as immoral and irredeemable and make them the scapegoats for the sins of an entire nation. That applies as much to stereotypes of urban dwellers as rural ones.

In Lind's article, he talks about a kind of elite arrogance that confuses its location with its substance:

Should anyone doubt that dissing rather than flattering the "rubes" is an aberration, examples of liberal snobbery are not hard to find in progressive publications. Sometimes it's genteel, sometimes it's raw. In an essay titled "The Urban Archipelago" a few years ago, the editors of Seattle's alt-weekly the Stranger wrote: "It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion -- New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on ... And we are the real Americans. They -- rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs -- are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers ... We can secede emotionally ... by turning our backs on the heartland ... We're everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the shitholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We'll take Manhattan."

Manhattan. Home to the Lower East Side, the Meat Packing District, Harlem, East Harlem, Hells Kitchen. Some of the roughest, most blue collar, most in-your-face, least namby-pamby effete locations America ever produced. When I lived there in the 90s, you didn't go walking around after dark by yourself in these places, unless you were tough. "Fuck" is a four syllable word in these neighborhoods, the speaker drawing out every dram of invective from each letter. These are the ethnic enclaves that were instrumental in converting the Democratic Party from nothing more than a revanchist, brutal power elite in the South into a national party that defended working class interests, however imperfectly. These blue collar workers and the rest spread throughout the industrial belt of the US and whose grandchildren and great grandchildren are now being dismissed as racist Archie Bunkers because they vote for their class interest, the ungrateful bastards.

See, the country doesn't break up so neatly into the hip urban elites and the troglodytes outside the cities. That hip urbanity has its roots in the union organizing of the Ladies Garment Worker union after the Triangle Factory Fire in SoHo. The blue collars that built up the Democratic Party machines in the cities are a part of the liberal democratic tradition, and deserve better than the two-faced pandering offered by Obamcans.

No party can afford to be an island, even in an archipelago.

Anglachel

Much Better Than I Can Say It

Two articles today get to the heart of what I've been trying to say for the last month, but haven't been able to pull together. I'm offering extended quotes because what these two have to say is important.

First is Michael Lind's brilliant piece in Salon, The Rubes and the Elites. He engages in some reasonably straightforward political science cross-cut with sensible sociology and comes up with a calm explanation of the voting patterns we are seeing in the campaign. If you don't subscribe to Salon, you may need to sit through an ad to read the article. Believe me, it's worth it. Some key paragraphs:

The events of the past few days are additional evidence of a profound rift in the Democratic Party, one revealed in the differing constituencies of the two remaining candidates. One story, told by Obama backers and the mainstream media, holds that there is a white racist problem: The Democratic Party is deeply divided between anti-racists (that is, supporters of Barack Obama) and racists (Democratic primary voters who preferred Hillary Clinton or any candidate other than Barack Obama, particularly the working-class white men who are often described, in zoological terms, as "white males"). The other story, which has yet to be told, holds that the difference between the constituencies of Obama and Clinton has little to do with race and reflects instead long-familiar regional and cultural splits among whites in the Democratic electorate. The prospects of the Democratic Party in the fall depend in part on whether these rifts can be healed.

The path of least resistance for liberal journalists and bloggers is to respond to these disturbing numbers by demonizing less-educated white Democrats. That is easier for them than to grasp the idea that these voters might actually like Hillary Clinton. One theory holds that "low information" voters, ignorant of the candidates and the issues, favor Clinton because of name recognition. But contrary to the progressive mythology about "low-information voters," a March Gallup poll shows that "both Obama and Clinton have near-universal name identification across all educational levels."

Even more common has been the claim by many supporters of Obama that the Clinton campaign, by means of subtle appeals to white racial prejudice, has attracted a large number of bigots who oppose Obama because he is black. The "race baiting" is alleged to have consisted of Bill Clinton's comparison of Obama to Clinton's friend Jesse Jackson, and Hillary Clinton's praise for the civil rights efforts of Lyndon Johnson, which, it was said, denigrated the achievements of Martin Luther King Jr. Since when have white race baiters praised Jesse Jackson and LBJ?

To judge from Obama's several statements on the subject, he sincerely believes that working-class whites, lacking the self-awareness to recognize the actual economic origins of their distress, seek relief from their pain by praying in church, slaughtering deer, and making illegal immigrants and imports from foreign countries scapegoats for ills that have nothing to do with immigration or trade. They may not be racists, they may even be sympathetic victims, but they are too irrational to understand their genuine problems and their true interests, which are chiefly economic, a fact that university-educated progressives in big cities and college towns can readily perceive.

Whether the "bitter" controversy helps Hillary Clinton win enough votes in the final primaries to beat the odds and win the Democratic nomination remains to be seen. At press time, she was surging in the polls. One thing is certain: In the fall election, John McCain, whoever his Democratic opponent might be, will portray himself as the candidate who defends the dignity and pride of working-class and lower-middle-class Americans of all races against the disdain of elite liberals. Unfortunately, many progressives will make that task much easier by repeating the litany of contempt: Rubes. Rednecks. Retro.

The other post of the day is from the incomparable Bob Somerby. A blogger before the term existed, Bob takes no prisoners on the electoral impact of elitism on Democratic Party prospects:

Truly, it has been embarrassing to watch some liberals attempt to come to terms with this matter. Just as an obvious matter of fact, condescension toward average people has plagued progressive movements at least since the late 1960s, when Dr. King stopped being the public face of progressive change and various Middle America-trashers took his place in the public imagination. (Abbie Hoffman, for instance.) In his brilliant public ministry, Dr. King confronted people who turned dogs and hoses loose on children; blew up churches where children were praying; threw him in jail on tortured pretexts; and eventually chased him down and killed him. But quite aggressively, Dr. King refused to deny the soul of the Bull Connors—of those who behaved in such fallen ways. Within a few years, it became possible to tag progressivism with the face of those who loudly showed the world how much they hated the mores and life-styles of their horrible mommies and daddies. From that day to this, progressive politics has been damaged by a sometimes-accurate perception—the perception that progressives and liberals are a bunch of snooty snobs

In fact, progressives sometimes are snooty snobs. We love to display our cultural and moral superiority to those whose values or instincts may differ. We love to call them xenophobes, vigilantes and racists. We love to ridicule their religion (just read the comments whenever Amy Sullivan posts). Indeed, Bob Herbert starts off this morning’s column by giving vent to this very instinct. This is exceptionally sloppy exposition—and it’s probably very bad politics:

HERBERT (4/15/08): Maybe Barack Obama felt he couldn't afford to give the correct answer.

He was asked at a fund-raiser in San Francisco about his campaign's experiences in the run-up to next week's Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. One of the main problems, of course, is that he hasn't generated as much support as he'd like among white working-class voters.

There is no mystery here. Except for people who have been hiding in caves or living in denial, it's pretty widely understood that a substantial number of those voters—in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and elsewhere—will not vote for a black candidate for president.

“There is no mystery here,” Herbert says, betraying the confidence of the elitist. (In his first sentence, he modestly acknowledges that he knows “the correct answer.”) And then he makes a sweeping (if imprecise) assessment of the souls many people; “a substantial number” of Pennsylvanians won’t vote for Obama because of his race, he says. Later, he leans down from the mountaintop, saying this: “No one has an obligation to vote for Mr. Obama, and it's certainly not racist to vote against him.” Gee, thanks! But wouldn’t you know it? Right at the start of his piece, he seems to say something quite different.

Are there people in Pennsylvania who will vote against Obama due to race? Presumably there are—although, in fact, there’s plenty of “mystery” about how “substantial” the “number” might actually be. But at least since the late 1960s, many progressives have behaved just as Herbert does here. It’s our first instinct! We start by attributing the worst possible motives and attributes to wide numbers of everyday people—people whom we’ve never met. What exactly does Herbert mean when he says “a substantial number” of Pennsylvanians won’t vote for Obama due to his race? There’s no way to know for sure—but his formulation seems to take everyone in. This formulation—the first thing he offers—quickly makes everyone suspect. “There is no mystery here,” he says—although, of course, there is.

Unfortunately, many “progressives” simply can’t understand the nature of this decades-old problem. They can’t understand why it’s bad politics (and basically foolish) to ridicule people for being religious. They don’t see why it’s bad politics this week to build jokes around the word “gun-toting.” A few months ago, they didn’t understand why it was morally obnoxious (and vastly stupid) to accuse everyone in sight of being a slobbering racist. Sergio Bendixen, for example—so accused for answering a question he’d been asked about a delicate subject. They could tell that Bendixen was a big vile race man—and that others had conspired with him!

To all appearances, some men get into comedy so they can ridicule women from a stage. Similarly, some people seem to become progressives so they can forever parade about, telling the world about their moral superiority to all the unwashed rubes. For them, progressive politics is about name-calling. A movie is playing in their heads. In this movie, they and their friends are the very good people. Mommy and Daddy are not.

We’d be inclined to say that this political/moral problem began to afflict progressive movements in the late 1960s. And uh-oh! In the last few days, conservative columnists have sometimes shown that they know this terrain rather well. This morning, George Will goes back to FDR to illustrate this liberal problem. We won’t necessarily go along with his assessment of Adlai Stevenson. (He works from a few offhand comments here.) But as a general matter, we think he’s uncomfortably close to the mark as he describes “liberalism's transformation since Franklin Roosevelt:”

WILL (4/15/08): What had been under FDR a celebration of America and the values of its working people has become a doctrine of condescension toward those people and the supposedly coarse and vulgar country that pleases them.

When a supporter told Adlai Stevenson, the losing Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, that thinking people supported him, Stevenson said, "Yes, but I need to win a majority." When another supporter told Stevenson, "You educated the people through your campaign," Stevenson replied, "But a lot of people flunked the course." Michael Barone, in "Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan," wrote: "It is unthinkable that Roosevelt would ever have said those things or that such thoughts ever would have crossed his mind." Barone added: "Stevenson was the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class American culture—the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting."

Many “shirts-and-skins” players will reject any words spoken by Will and Barone. But in this matter, Will and Barone are uncomfortably close to right—and Robinson and Cohen seem largely clueless. But then, conservatives have long understood these matters better than “progressives” have, thereby gaining electoral advantage. Often, they have overstated or misstated particular claims, with mainstream journos playing along. (How dare Kerry go wind-surfing?) But they seem to understand the terrain better than liberal counterparts.

Elitism isn’t about what you do. It isn’t about how much money you have. (FDR was wealthy.) It’s about the things you think and say about those small-town or working-class rubes. Some progressives have shown, again and again, that they simply can’t understand this distinction. Will Obama’s remark cost him votes? We don’t know; we hope they won’t, although we’re beginning to get concerned about his rookie mistakes. But if they do, it will be because there have been so many such remarks, by so many other people, remarks which often weren’t off-hand comments. This has been a major problem for many years; some liberals still seem to lack the first clue about what the problem consists in.

What so many Obamacans fail to get from the SF statement is that the truth or accuracy of whether people are bitter isn't electorally significant. The impact is whether those so described believe the Democratic candidate is the one who is going to do something concrete to aleviate their situation, and whether they will do so with respect for the humanity and dignity of the person in need of help.

So far, the answer appears to be "No" where The Precious is concerned.

Anglachel

Progressive Derangement Syndrome

I feel like I've stepped through the looking glass.

On the one hand, I read news articles about working class voters voicing their dismay and anger at Obama for dissing them at a fundraiser. On the other hand, I read comments and blog quotes confidently proclaiming that Obama has successfully dodged the bullet of negative fallout. Why, because the media whores on MSNBC don't talk about it?

There is a disconnect between Obamacans (which more clearly defines the particular participants than "liberal elite" or "wine track liberals"), particularly those in the blogosphere, and reality that is increasing exponentially. The less their version of the How the World Must Be corresponds to the everyday fabric of American lives, the more stridently they insist that All Is Well. I've come to the conclusion that it's not just campaign hype, either, or trying to put on a good face. They really do think that if they say something three times with conviction, that makes it true. Something has rotted the brains of previously reasonable people.

All I have is what I see and trying to make sense of it. I'm trying to put it into historical perspective as well, puzzling out where the hell this bizarre mind set has come from. At the core of theis syndrome is an enormous amount of resentment and a powerful desire to punish. I don't find this unusual, as it has characterized much of American national sentiment since the Iran hostage crisis, like an existential chip on the nation's shoulder. On the Left, I get the impression that what many people desire is someone to blame or something to expell to remove the tremendous run of bad electoral luck the party has suffered since, well, Nixon. This resentment has attached itself to the Right's Clinton Derangement Syndrome, but is not identical to it.

The Republicans have good reason to hate both the Clintons - Hillary and Bill beat them. Repeatedly. The Democrats have no good reason to hate the Clintons - they beat Republicans repeatedly. Indeed, most Democrats love these two and are proud as punch about them. It's not as though the party has had significant success otherwise. So, what gives? What is going on with this fanatical and self-destructive behavior on the part of alleged progressives? The closer you look, the more deranged it gets.

Obama goes to a fuindraiser thrown by a Republican billionaire, collecting 2.5 million dollars from the event, and talks about working class and rural Democratic voters as pathetic, bitter losers who have to console themselves gor their loserdom by shooting off guns and believing in superstitions and fairy tales. This is completely in keeping with the derision showered on Hillary for comparing herself to Rocky - to the Obamacan faction, Rocky is a loser, just like the other rubes. They are losers, i.e., they are the people on whom to place the blame for our losses, our humiliations at the hands of the criminal Republicans. I don't think the Obamacans have ever forgiven the Reagan Democrats for their defection to the Gipper.

On the other hand, they don't believe their own words. Obama's fundamental lack of faith was revealed in his dismissal of the faith of others, such that he now has to protest that he attends church. Yes, Precious, we know. That he would attend a church in bad faith, not really believing the Gospel but drinking in the antiquated and self-indulgent sociological arguments of his pastor, doesn't raise an eyebrow among Obamacans. But of course he wouldn't believe that silly mumbo-jumbo; it's just that he has to do some ridiculous things to get elected. (Roll eyes at the unreasonable demands of pandering to the simple minded.)

More important, they don't believe that words matter, at least not those spoken to the rubes to win votes. There is a bizarre belief, we might call it faith, that only the good and the best will be absorbed. Under the spell of this faith, they don't think Obama's words have any power except to make people swoon and no consequences save to increase his vote count. It is a postmodern conceit that reality is what you make of it, crafted and deployed to meet the circumstance, and only irony will result. They honestly don't consider the possibility that the working class and the poor are in a position to pass judgment on these statements and "performatives", that they form considered and sophisticated opinions on the world they confront just the way erudite UC tenured professors might do, or even Ivy League educated A-List bloggers. Whoda thunk it? Words do matter, but the words that people find matter most may not be those you want them to hear. The rubes have ears. They not only watch CNN, they occasionally read newspapers. Some of them even fire up the interwebs and look at them bloggy thingamabobs.

Reading - not just for the highly edjumacated.

What the hell is up with my party? Disenfranchising voters to throw an election? Dclaring vast swaths of party loyalists to be racists? Deriding party stalwarts as "Republican-lite"? Dismissing the economic successes of a previous Democratic administration? Just why are the self-described progressives so frantic to remove Bill Clinton from the company of Democratic presidents? I have provided my answers, but it still remains a mind-boggling phenomenon.

Their vision for America becomes less coherent, less relevant by the day. Their "progressivism" is defined by their adherence to CDS, and whatever else has been declared a worthy goal, like universal health care and economic policies that alleviate poverty, falls to the wayside. Think about it - GKJM's greatest claim to fame is being the center of the opposition to Republican attempts to privatize Social Security, shaming, hustling and supporting Democratic lawmakers into fighting back the attack. He is fully behind the ONLY Democratic candidate I can think of who argues for revisiting the Social Security battle and whose chief financial advsor is a conservative who wants to privatize Social Security. Ezra Klein will send his entire body of work about health insurance and health care down the toilet to support a candidate who didn't bother to address this topic at first and now offers warmed over do-nothing measures. W.T.F?

Netroots progressivism is shown to be rootless, and progresses into greater derangement by the day.

Anglachel

Hands of the King - Complete

It is not all politics with me. No, really! There's family and friends, the new old house I'm renovating, a very busy job and other odds and ends.

For several years, from late 2002 until early 2007, I was writing a fanfiction novel, Hands of the King. After a hiatus to deal with family concerns and to jettison some very annoying and opportunistic fandfom jerks from my life, I wrapped up final edits and posted it on the HASA web site.

For those not familiar with fanfiction, it is nothing more or less than fans of a certain book, series, TV show and/or movie coming up with their own stories set in the world of the original work. It may be a completely new story, with original characters, plots, and locations. It may be a "gap-filler" which tells a story of something that had to have happened (an adult character's childhood) or to flesh out a scene that must have ocurred given things characters or the author says. Finally, the story may be an "Alternate Universe" (AU) where the writer radically changes something (or a lot of things) to presetn something new. Most fanfiction is atrocious, but that's part of its charm. In the Tolkien fandom, the appeal is that JRRT left so much writing lying about, with massive timelines and histories and stories only alluded to and multiple versions of just about everything, that it's an addictive world to write in.

I've written a number of stories (and, yeah, they are probably reasonably atrocious, judged by professional standards), with HotK being the biggest. It's very long at almost 900,000 words and 85 chapters plus appendices. It's a gap-filler, being an account of the courtship and marriage of Denethor, Steward of Gondor, and Finduilas of Dol Amroth.

I began it out of revulsion of the usual Denethor stories of the time (2002). In them, he was usually portrayed as violent, stupid, gay, abusive to his wife and children, into torturing people, immoral, short, socially inept, and just about every other negative you can think of. Finduilas was written as a helpless, hysterical, weak, stupid doormat, either killing herself or being murdered by Denethor. The story lines offended me as both a feminist and a political theorist because of the hackneyed gender stereotypes and the inability of the writers to rise to the occasion and write about fully rounded characters in a time of wrenching cultural and political change. I intended to write a short work, novella length, of about 12 chapters, taking a break from my Shire stories series. Hmm, didn't turn out the way I expected.

I ended up in an argument with Tolkien about faith, humanism and fate. What would it mean to be a humanist in a world where immortal, angelic beings walk the earth with you, openly engaging in divine warfare through the ages? What does it mean to value faith above politics, or to place a divine plan ahead of ordinary lives? It was a challenge to write with and against the grain of Tolkien's body of work, being bound by the limits of the world, but having the main characters contest the fundamental terms of being in Middle-earth. Of course, it couldn't just be exposition. It had to be told through the events of their lives and be something a reader would want to stick with.

It's got just about everything in it - battle scenes, love scenes, mysteries to be solved, babies to be cuddled, an obnoxious cat and more than a few kitchen sinks. It helps if you've read Lord of the Rings, and is even better if you've read the Silmarillion and the Hobbit, but it will (I think) stand on its own. The characterizations of Denethor and Finduilas were unique in the fandom when I began the work and have influenced how others now write them.

Just a little entertainment for those who are interested.

Anglachel

Cause for General Concern

Via Jeralyn at TalkLeft, it looks like Politico has finally caught up with me on Obama's prospects for the general election, namely, crappy. The reporters couch the entire article as a "this is the stuff the Clintons are saying," and offer it as some kind of explanation for why the stupid bitch won't quit, probably to cover their asses, but the fundamentals of the article are no more or less than what any fact-based observor of the electoral map could have told you after Ohio and Texas.

Obama is a poor general election candidate, he has always been a poor general election candidate, and his imploding campaign is demonstrating exactly why he is weak in the general, even if Hillary were to stop her campaign cold right now.

The Democratic constituencies he is weak with have nothing to do with Hillary, such as working class voters (and that is more than just "white" people) who don't like his position on trade and health care. His response to their doubt is to call them racist. These are constituencies who could very well go McCain in the general. He has no idea how to appeal to these voters and has no track record of note to use to back up claims that he will serve their interests. He's sort of generic liberal guy on those counts, not offering even as much as Kerry did last time. Politico talks about the Florida vote being "Jewish" and not liking Obama's association with anti-Israel speakers, but that state is also full of Democrats who overwhelmingly voted for HRC and are having their votes deliberately voided to ensure Obama's nomination. My very Catholic mother-in-law and all of her senior female friends in Florida will not vote for Obama in November in a way that they probably would have voted for Edwards or Biden. His claims to being able to win Western states dissolves when his weakness with Hispanic voters is examined.

Hillary's problematic Democratic constituencies are problematic for different reasons. With AA voters, she had enjoyed enormous support until two things happened: first, Obama won Iowa and showed himself to be a viable candidate and, second, the Obama campaign launched their no-holds barred filth-fest to portray Hillary as racist and an enemy of the AA community, including threatening black party leaders who protested this portrayal. Her problems with this constituency are because of Obama, and are much more due to the former cause than the latter. She has a long public record of her work on behalf of the AA community and, even after the trashing some people within it have heaped on her, she will continue to do so. That's just the kind of person she is. A certain segment of the liberal elite, wonderfully embodied by UC Berkeley Economics professor Brad Delong and his clueless arrogance, hate her with a passion that is simply irrational and might vote Nader if their Precious isn't handed the nomination. After that, she will have to fight hard for the Reagan Democrat constituency, who will prefer her economic acumen to McCain's "more of the same," but who can be swayed by national security arguments. In the exit polling done in 2004, it was John Kerry's perceived weakness on security that was the deciding factor in key coutines in Ohio - exactly those counties Hillary dominated in the primary.

Furthermore, it's not just the constituencies, but the distribution of those voters on the Electoral College map. Let's go to my favorite electoral map site, 270 to Win, and look at recent electoral match up maps:

Hillary vs. McCain: She starts out ahead of him in electoral votes, 202 to 198. Pretty evenly matched, with only 4 electoral votes between them. Of the states that are not in McCain's column, how can Hillary pick up 68 electoral votes from swing states to make the magic 270?

• CT - 7 (202+7=209)
• NJ - 15 (209+15=224)
• DE - 3 (224 +3=227)
• HI - 4 (227+4=231)
• FL - 27 (231+27=258)
• WV - 5 (258+5=263)
• and either WA or MN or MO or WI or MI or VA

The first four states should go to any Democratic nominee. Hillary can win back WV if she is getting Pennsylvania and Ohio, and she's consistently winning Florida. Michigan is likely for her because of pushing to count their vote in the primary, Washington is a traditionally blue state, Missouri is a long shot, and Minnesota and Wisconsin are fully competitive. Virginia may say swing, but I doubt its competitive. Winning two of the final group and losing WV would still work. Winning Nevada is a possibility, but wouldn't be enough on its own to clinch the Electoral College.

On McCain's side, he has to get 72 electoral votes to win. That means even winning Virginia and Florida are not enough to put him over the top. He would have to win three of the following: WA, MN, MO, WI, MI, NV, WV. With Nevada or West Virginia as the third, that means he must win MI and either WA or MO, to reach 270. Also, if the three are MN, WI and either MO or WA, he is one vote short, and thus must win at least Nevada or West Virginia as well. Basically, if McCain has lost OH and PA, he must win MI, FL and VA to have a chance. If Hillary takes Florida out of play, McCain is highly unlikely to win.

Obama vs. McCain: Obama starts 28 points bakc, 180 vs. 208, and McCain is ahead of where he started with Hillary. More states are swing states because Obama is not clearly leading in them, thus momentum is leaning towards McCain. Of the states that are not in McCain's column, how can Obama pick up 90 electoral votes from swing states to make the magic 270?

• PA - 21 (180+21=201)
• OH - 20 (201+20=221)
• MI- 17 (221+17=238)
• NJ - 15(238_15=253)
• and then at least two of the following - MN, WI, VA, CO, IA, but the two cannot be CO and IA as they do not total 17.

See a problem here? Yeah, he tanked in Ohio and New Jersey, has dissed Michigan by refusing to let them revote even when he might have won it, and is trailing badly in Pennsylvania. Minnesota and Wisconsin are probably easier for him to win than they are for Hillary, though they are swing states for her as well, and it is questionable whether he could pull out Virginia or Colorado. He simply isn't competitive in any border state - KY, TN, MO, AR - or in Florida. If he loses Ohio and Pennsylvania, he basically has to take evey other swing state to make up for their electoral deficit, whereas if McCain picks up just OH and PA, he only needs 21 more votes to clinch the election, and that means just Virginia and South Carolina. Not a good bet.

These are projections, of course, but they have some basis in the demographic makeup of the states and reference the historical voting patterns of those states.

And all of this, the Politico article and the latest polls, were done before Obama's recent blather about bitter lower-class voters.

Obama's ability to win the Democratic nomination itself presupposes that Florida and Michigan are eliminated from the delegate count and that he wins big in all the remaining primaries and that the lion's share of the super delegates break his way. Barring votes from Michigan and Florida will cripple the Democartic party in those states in November. It does not look likely that he will win big in the upcoming primaries. Super delegates, according to the Politico report, are beginning to question the wisdom of their initial pledge.

Dr. Dean, what are you wishing for now?

Anglachel

Post-Racial Politics

At this point in the campaign, I'm less interested in the particular outcome than I am in what the contest is exposing about Left politics and the reaction of the different groups of actors towards these candidates. This post is an attempt to round up different ideas I've been discussing into a more coherent and less rhetorical post.

Ironically enough, while accusations of racism have been thrown around by the Obama campaign (and gleefully amplified by the MSM and the CDS-afflicted blogosphere), the campaign to date has demonstrated that racism (or more specifically, promotion of white supremacy) has lost its salience among Democratic voters. There is no group, faction or movement within the Democrats advocating white supremacy - that strand of the party has either moved to the Republicans or else has renounced and abandoned their former position. There is no disagreement on the left that racisim is pernicious and destructive, and that it has to do with defending privilege. The critique that local and regional elite groups (usually but not always Republican), instrumentally deploy race-based arguments to try to encourage fear in different racial groups and by doing so eke out narrow electoral victories is known and understood. On the Left, it is increasingly accepted that African Americans as a group have been harmed in a way no other identifiable racial or ethnic group has been over the course of the nation's history [Note: I am describing a phenomenon, not declaring a fact. Please don't weigh in on how this or that group has been equally/more brutalized than AAs.] and that hundreds of years of formal and deliberate brutality towards them as a group is not reversed in a few decades. Black anger at white privilege is justified and white resistence to relinquishing that privilege is entrenched. A great task lies before the party and the left generally to continue to battle this blight upon our nation.

What the tactic of branding Hillary supporters as racist has done, strangely enough, is expose the class bigotry of a portion of the party leadership and the Left punditocracy. I have said before and I will say again - I refuse to accept that millions of Democratic voters, black or white, are choosing their candidate only because they won't vote for someone of the other race. Yes, there have to be some people who won't vote for the black guy. I'm willing to bet there are no more of those voters on the left than won't vote for a woman (Indeed, Paul Lukasiak's analysis of polling trends indicates that gender bigotry may be stronger than race bigotry.), so race bigotry is most likely cancelled out by gender bigotry. To the degree that we can see race-based voting, it is going to be in areas where racial division is a political tool of the local elites. In California, we are seeing more and more of this aimed at dividing white and Hispanic voters. My county, San Diego, is the epicenter of this manuever, home to Pete Wilson's political machine. Dark mutterings about "Reconquista" are always about, and Latino politicians' loyalty to the state vs. loyalty to "La Raza" is always in the campaign mix.

I also reject claims that AA voters are only voting for Obama out of racial identification, any more than women are only voting for Hillary out of gender identification. Our identities are complex and what is important in one context may be less so in another. I doubt AA Obama supporters would be similarly enthusiastic about Alan Keyes or that female Hillary voters would jump for the chance to vote for Kay Bailey Hutchison. Once candidates reach a threshold of acceptablility, then certain non-political attributes about the candidate that bear political weight (ethnicity, gender, celebrity) may tip the scapes in that person's favor. What others see as some kind of rejection of a candidate, and the argument is most often put forward as AAs are rejecting Hillary, is better and less divisively seen as merely a ranking of preferences - I like both, but I prefer A to B.

What we are seeing, however, is the way in which Democratic Party leaders and power brokers, large swaths of Left Blogistan and the always opportunistic MSM are seizing on a narrative about working class white ethnic voters - one derived from a shallow, reductionistic interpretation of historical patterns - as being mired in racial resentment and casting votes for punitive reasons. It is as though they are unable to get past historical incidents of white resistence to desegregation, school integration, affirmative action, and other acts that explicitly weakened white socio-economic privilege, and see that the US is a different nation than it was forty years ago. People in these groups, from Obama himself to anonymous commenters on blogs to media whores are persistently pushing a picture of those who do not vote for Obama as:

• White
• Middle class or lower
• Uneducated
• Bitter over lack of economic success
• Unrepentantly racist
• Violent (gun owners, pro-military)
• Deluded (clinging to religion)
• Parochial
• Illiberal (Reagan Democrats, i.e., not loyal to the Left)

They explicitly label non-Obama voters as "Archie Bunkers" and "Bubbas". There is another, less explicit thread running through thet characterizations, that these people are either too dumb or too deluded to take advantage of social opportunities that would allow them to improve their socio-economic status; in short, that the condition in which these people find themselves is self-inflicted because they are white and therefore are privileged in comparison to minorities as such. If they really wanted to get ahead, they could. (Hmm, where have we heard that kind of argument before? It's kind of what the right argues about minorities...) The list also excludes the possibility that whites of their own class may be illiberal and racist, granting themselves an unacknowledged class exemption from the faults of their socio-economic inferiors. Finally, it skates over the cultural, economic and geographic factors that place the ethic groups in lower income stratas into fierce competition with each other for increasingly scarce and impermanent socio-economic goods. You know, like jobs, health care and retirement income.

There is no acknowledgement that non-Obama voters have far more complex identities than the punch list above. It does not allow room for someone who is working class and struggling to have a constructive preference for another candidate (I like them both just fine, but I prefer B to A). They are always already pernicious race voters. The claim becomes even stranger when one understands that this description is meant to apply to any non-Obama voter, even someone like myself who is in the top quintile of household income, has a graduate degree, is a "creative class" worker, has extremely radical left stances, fervently believes in gun control, does not believe in any deity, and will not vote Republican under any circumstances.

Let's come to a full stop here. What I am describing is a political tactic, based on an inadequate narrative, that is finally backfiring badly on those who have been pushing it. This is not reverse racsim. This is not some attempt by the Democratic elite and their enablers to construct and defend economic and political structures to enforce inequitable distribution of social, political and economic goods on working class whites as a group. (The question of whether Obama's "policies" would enforce inequitable distributions on the working class regardless of race is another question.)

In addition, the hamfisted deployment of a moronic claim against Democratic party rank and file stalwarts in no way excuses the very real persistence of racism in the US, the kind so expertly exploited by the Movement Conservatives for the last four decades. White racsm is real. It harms this nation. It is used to excuse the hateful behavior of others (I'm just fighting the KKK!) which has it's own corrosive effect on the body politic but which cannot equal the damage done here and now by entrenched white privilege, which is mostly entrenched upper-middle and upper class white privilege.

I'll say what Brad Delong, Markos, Ezra Klein, Big Media Matt and the Guy who Kidnapped Josh Marshall (GKJM) will not: The people currently arguing about the alleged racism of Hillary voters are exactly the people who most materially benefit from the existence of white privilege in this nation. That means YOU, boyz. People who are in my socio-economic class (so I'm talking about ME here - I am not excluding myself from the ill-gotten gains) are those who are reaping the long term benefits of the wealth and power generated by centuries of white supremacy.

To my mind, the Obama campaign is unselfconciously, though quite deliberately, pushing an argument about a group of citizens that was never entirely true back in the 60s and 70s and long ago ceased to be true among the vast majority of Democrats. They really think of Democratic voters as two groups - an enlightened creative class and a retrograde working class - and place upon the head of the latter all the failures of the party since LBJ. It is not factually true, but it is the story they tell themselves about themselves and what allows them to so vigorously advance a claim about Democratic primary voters that is not supported by an examination of the voters themselves.

The economic success of the Clinton administration went a good way to removing the grounds for racial resentment by focusing on the economic conditions that creates unreasonable competition for social goods. To argue more could have been done is to ignore that advances did happen, and now the party has an opportunity to restructure economic conditions, cementing gains and advancing goals. We won't get there by demonizing an opponent's supporters as bitter, vengeful and stupid. Voters do vote their interests, but those interests arise from complex identities and contradictory lives. Interests are not monolithic. They can be nudged in better directions and cemented with legislation that obviously improves their lives.

The Democratic Party elite needs to get over their obsession with HillBillies and start concretely addressing the bread and butter concerns of all working class Americans.

Anglachel

Class Act

Via Corrente, it appears that The Precious has gone and stuck his foot in his mouth again, dissing working class Democrats and the Clintons:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama said. “And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Where to start? First, what this says to me is that the current democratic campaign is first and foremost about the class divide in the party, a division that is being camouflaged by the Obama campaign's self-serving screams about racism. The Democratic Party is being forced to confront the way in which it has crafted a story about working class voters falling behind in real economic terms because of their moral turpitude, i.e., their "racism".

In Salon yesterday, elite UC Berkeley professor Brad Delong engaged in egregious Hillary bashing and casually dismissed people who would not vote for Obama as racists. He does this without acknowledging the full cultural and class assumptions built into the assertion about white reluctance to vote for a black candidate, the kind that come welling up in all their ugliness in political cartoons where "white racists" are portrayed. They aren't shown as nice Upper West Side yuppies. They are Bubbas and Bunkers. They are the people Obama identifies in his quote above and that his campaign sneered at after the loss in Ohio. What Obama shows with his gaffe (As Michael Kinsley famously said, a gaffe is when someone inadvertantly tells an important truth) is his true perception of working class Americans - something utterly alien to himself.

The truth being told here is the way in which the "wine track" cadre of the Democratic party has no clue about working class America except for their own strange blend of bitter, bible-thumping rubes who just can't grasp the big picture, the poor things, and keep voting against their own interests. Hey, I can tick off five people I personally know who more or less match that description, except that they aren't thumping bibles and they aren't bitter and they are leading pretty darn normal lives, but they keep voting Republican.

Obama's statements today are paradigmatic of the wine-track attitude and are particularly shocking coming on the heels of his own plea that the nation not judge him harshly for his associations and pastimes, that he be allowed a complex identity that could encompass both his grandmother and his pastor. Fair enough, and an argument that elicits a certain sympathy from me on his personal behalf, though it fell far short of explaining why we should not question his political judgment based on the company he keeps. What he requires we do for him he refuses to do for others, preferring to dismiss an entire class of people in a high-handed manner. Graciously excusing them from racism and then turning around and denigrating their lives in an even more fundamental way is not going to win over a lot of hearts and minds, Barry.

From a political theory perpsective, Obama offered a singularly sophmoric Marxist argument about the voters of Pennsylvania (and by extension the entire working class) as suffering from false conciousness.They are simply bitter about not having jobs and thus they are clinging to the markers of Bubba/Bunker-hood - God, guns, racism (oops, guess that slipped back in), xenophobia, and anti-economic growth (free trade). Gee, what would that look like if we drew a picture? Of course, they had a lot more jobs under Clinton than under any of the Republicans bracketing his administration, but lets not let facts get in the way of a good myth. How does he know they suffer from false conciousness? They fail to vote for him. If they could just rise above their bitter and narrow particularity, then they would see the light and vote for The Precious.

No.

They have guns because they like shooting stuff. They hold to their religion because it provides them with something they value. I may be a secular humanist myself, but as the child of a very devout father, this dismissal of faith went down sideways with me. (It also makes me want to ask, so what the fuck keeps your skinny ass in the pew of your church, given how you characterize the faith of those who do not support you?) Their identities are every bit as complex as Obama's, and as grounded in the dense fabric of their lives as what he claims for himself. It is not epiphenomenal, something to be shed when the scales fall from their eyes and they understand their role in his march to greatness.

It feels weird to have to state that there is dignity and worth in a life of labor. These allegedly bitter, backwards people have no interest in leaving their way of life so they can join Obamacans at the Starbucks in some hip urban enclave. They need not apologize for the choices they've made in their lives, no matter how much people like Obama and Delong try to shame them into voting against their interests. The poor bitter rubes of Pennsylvania actually want universal health care, which you aren't delivering. They want Social Security, which your advisor Goolsby wants to privatize. They want an orderly and honorable end to the Iraq occupation, which you are now waffling on. They want deecent education for their kids, a relief from predatory lenders, some privacy, and an end to the assumption that they should be ashamed of themselves because they don't aspire to be upper class.

In the end, what Obama's blather today has done is expose the elite myth that working class America is deficient in some way. The elite of the right proclaims the deficiency is natural inferiority. The elite of the left proclaims the deficiency to be intellectual inferiority. Both scorn these people as Bunkers and Bubbas. What the left misses and what the right fears is that the Clinton appeal is based on respect for being from this class and of honoring those things in that way of life that deserve respect: dedication to family, unswerving loyalty to the nation, a work ethic, faith and a desire to do right by the people they love.

Anglachel

That Giant Sucking Sound

Was made by Howard Dean's testicles retracting up into his body when he read what Elizabeth Edwards had to say:

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards, remains unwilling to endorse either of the two remaining Democratic contenders, but the health care advocate told ABC News she preferred Sen. Clinton's health plan to Sen. Obama's.

In an interview with "Good Morning America's" Robin Roberts, airing Wednesday, Edwards - who recently began work as a senior fellow at the liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress - said she believed Clinton's health care plan was more inclusive than that of the Illinois senator.

"You need that universality in order to get the cost savings ... I just have more confidence in Sen. Clinton's policy than Sen. Obama's on this particular issue," she said.

As to how the contentious Democratic nomination will end, Edwards said she thought letting the race end at the convention was a good idea.

"I don't actually think it's a bad idea to have an open convention, where we actually got to hash out what the differences [between the candidates] were and how important they are," she said. Edwards said she liked the idea of Clinton and Obama running together on a so-called dream ticket, and discounted the idea of her husband, John, accepting a place as either candidate's running mate.

"[Clinton and Obama] are the two strongest Democrats running. It's hard not to believe that together they are stronger than they would be apart."

Elizabeth Edwards Backs Clinton Health Care Plan

OK, I think Elizabeth hit the trifecta here:

• Hillary's health care plan is better than Obama's, just like Paul Krugman has been telling us
• Not only is a long campaign not a problem, but it should be settled at the convention, not before it
• A unity ticket is a great bet, and I don't think she's looking at The Precious for the #1 slot

Now, are the Blogger Boyz going to attack Elizabeth Edwards for taking the stance that Hillary supporters have been saying all along? Are Dean and the rest of the bozo parade from the DNC going to take swipes at this women?

Who will show himself to be a fauxgressive?

Anglachel

Weeding Out the Competition

First of all, Melissa McEwan nails it:

Feminism is an integral part of progressivism.
If you're not a feminist, you're not a progressive.
No matter how much you hate Bush.
No matter how much you hate the Iraq war.
No matter how much you hate our current torture policy.
No matter how much you want to restore habeas corpus.
No matter how much you're totally going to vote for the Democrat in November.
If you're not a feminist, you're not a progressive.
You're a fauxgressive.
End of story.

Which leads me to my topic of the day - why are so many middle and upper-middle class men, typified by the A-List Blogger Boyz, who claim to be progressives such virulent anti-feminists? My answer is rational self-interest, also known as weeding out the competition.

Another way of putting it is why, if white racism is so persistent in this nation, why does this slender sliver of America appear immune to its siren call? Why does Hillary Clinton scare the crap out of the guy who kidnapped Josh Marshall, but he feels no anxiety (that he'll admit to) around The Precious? We can go into analysis of oedipal fantasies and the pervasive influence of patriarchy, yadda yadda, but my point is that this cohort of dudz is exactly the one that claims to be "post-" all those nasty -isms.

The answer is surprisingly simple. They face a lot of competition from white women for their social and economic successes, but not very much from black men. They get a lot more payoff from bashing, dominating, and fucking over women than they do from doing that to men of any color. They can get solidarity from the guyz against the hos. This cannot fully explain the anti-feminist behavior of self-identified liberal men, but it's one hell of a contributing factor.

In my various jobs, the men who have been unbearable assholes to me are the ones who directly compete with me for advancement and accolades. They are almost invariably the white guys. Oh, and usually the straight ones. Asian, hispanic, black and gay guys (and those categories are definitely not exclusive) are usually pretty decent to work with. We get passed over for promotion together...

Sociologically speaking, if you are in competition for scarce resources against another group or class of people and you find ways (social, legal, economic) to place those others at a structural disadvantage vis-a-vis yourself, such that they have barriers that increase the cost of advancement and wealth accumulation while you are not penalized, it is awfully easy to pretend that you have nothing to do with the disadvantage of that other class of people. It's also easy to internalize the attitudes and beliefs that reinforce the imposed disadvantages such that you can rationalize way the disparity in your respective positions - women want to be mommies rather than the modern workplace does not accomodate the needs of parents, or blacks have lower intelligence rather than systematic disparities in the education system paper over white mediocrity and suppress black intellectual achievements.

Why are white liberals so freaking guilty about the second class treatment of minorities in the US? Because every last one of us knows that if it weren't for that structural disadvantage, we wouldn't be ahead. We'd be much more vulnerable to the economic tides than we are. We wouldn't be able to count on presumption of innocence at a traffic stop. We wouldn't get the job we weren't qualified for and didn't deserve but where the other applicant was darker skinned or had an accent. It is guilt founded upon a secret hope that the advantages all go away - after we've made it.

The reaction can be guilt rather than anger because there is really no chance that this class of people will ever get ahead as a class such that there would be competition. It may not be PC to say this, but there is a very rational basis for working class white racism that has nothing to do with believing minorities are lesser beings and everything to do with keeping that structural advantage in place. That's why the cynical claims of the Obama campaign about Archie Bunkers - when the target is actually the guilty upper middle class - doesn't ring true. Obama himself is no threat. He codes "white". The threat he offers is not raising up minorities but turning his back on all the working class and failing to enact policies and programs that will help those who are struggling. The real way to undermine racism is by increasing economic stability and prosperity, not by trying to shame people living on the edge as some kind of moral reprobates.

Change the makeup of that class and suddenly the privileged white boyz start getting nasty. The structural disadvantage that kept women from competing directly for previously male-only positions, structures both legal and cultural, have disappeared with enormous speed in the last forty years, especially the last twenty, and while entry of women into the workplace in professional and skilled labor ranks (they have always worked their asses off in retail, agriculture and service industries) has increased household income, it has also curbed a rise in male wages while offering increased competition for positions. Women's economic success has directly harmed individual male economic success and the concomitant social privilege.

There's little enough competition in professional ranks from minorities that minority men can be viewed with equanimity, especially prized as an opportunity in which to publically demonstrate how you aren't one of those mouth-breather Bunkers or Bubbas who would be bigots to your hip black friend. Yeah, that is what the unidentified and probably fictional "Clinton campaign staffer" meant. The Josh Marshalls of this world are so loud and obnoxious about their support for Obama in part because they think it somehow proves they aren't racist (as if that was the issue) while completely sidestepping the way in which their economic and social privilege provides the protection from significant competition.

The rage being expressed by men who are in the top two economic quintiles of the population at women is fueled in great part because white women threaten their socio-economic advantage. Women like Hillary demonstrate that they are not going to get a pass anymore because they can piss standing up. (News flash - women can do that, too. We just have to work on technique a bit more than the guyz.) I am a direct and growing threat to white male professional dominance. The old boys are retiring and the old girls are beginning to take over upper management. While it is true that women will still side with men in misogynistic ways in power struggles, this is less true as women begin to numerically dominate the workforce. I am respected at my company for working my ass off and doing impressive things, but I know I have undying support from the three top women executives in the company (and the one gay man) that has helped me weather some utterly savage take-down attempts by threatened white guys.

The success Hillary is enjoying is flushing the fauxgressives out of the woodwork. Hillary hatred has permutations beyond simple misogyny, but the very real competition that women as a class offer these guys is what we see bubbling up in anti-feminist broadsides and pathetic attempts to reduce women's choices and aspirations to acts of vagina voting or bitchy resentment. What we are seeing in this election, from right and left, is the rage of white males who see their privilege under real threat and they don't like it one bit.

Get used to it, guyz.

Anglachel

Myth of the Media Darling

Big Tent Democrat of TalkLeft is one of the few (and quite possibly the only) sane Obama supporter left in Left Blogistan. He has an unfortunate belief that somehow Obama is a better candidate for the Democrats in the general because he is a "media darling", by which BTD means that the MSM will go easy on Obama in a way they would not on other Democratic candidates especially Hillary. It's not that they will be nice to Obama, but that they won't be quite a brutal.

This is a variation on the specious argument that Obama is more electable than Hillary because his negatives are lower, but has the advantge of being argued soberly by someone who admits he could very well be wrong. Unlike the usual popularity-based argument, BTD does not confuse expressions of CDS with Hillary actually being anything like the moronic portrayals of her. He's looking at relative levels of slime.

But he is wrong, and the reason he is wrong is due to the way CDS works in the media. They don't love Obama or consider him any kind of darling. They want him to beat Hillary. Period. End of affection. There really isn't a postitive take on Obama as such. He is more of a foil for the attacks on Clinton than gaining any great well of affection among the Russerts and Matthews of the press. Maureen Dowd may be psychotic, but she is channeling the actual attitude of the press corps(e) towards Obama - weak, effeminate, a pretty little toy they will soon grow tired of.
Obama's role in the campaign meta story is to rescue the Democratic Party from the clutches of the evil Clintons. The best and brightest on the left have totally bought into this fantasy to the point where they can't help acting out their deepest oedipal fantasies of what Hillary wants to do to their manhood, and the Dean faction of the DNC is more than happy to use it in a triumphal way, declaring the Obama has already won so go home already!

The trouble is, he can fulfill his role and still be a lovely punching bag for the media the second he secures the nomination. When the wimp is put next to the war hero, the MSM's leg thrills will be reserved for Big John.

Touting the Media Darling meme also overlooks the most concrete phenomenon of the campaign - Hillary wins despite the shit. Her allegedly overwhelming negatives don't hurt her much in large Democratic primaries, and those pesky voters (you know, the ones who actually make the decisions? Yeah, them!) far outnumber the Kewl Kidz partying on the bus and infesting the blogz. Even with every PR advantage he could possibly wish for - money up the kazoo, anti-democratic caucus system, fawning press, even the guy who kidnapped Josh Marshall singing his praises - Obama cannot win over enough voters to close the deal, and the upcoming primaries are his weakest spots in the entire campaign. And we're not even getting into the FL/MI backlash.

The media will, of course, bash Hillary. They've done it for decades now and the public has tuned it out. Ho-hum, yeah, yeah, she killed Vince Foster out of jealousy over his involvement with a lesbian drug dealer out in Whitewater, whatever. She's evil incarnate and is a corporatist communist who will turn us all into imperialst socialists, yawn, yeah, I heard that somewhere. What the current campaign has also shown is that the nastier the media gets to her, the more strongly people rally to her side.

Hillary is the opposite of a media darling. She's the voters' darling, and that is how you win elections.

Anglachel

The United States of Obama

Image created by bcc and taken from Taylor Marsh.