It Won’t Work

This is more of the same, but I think it’s important so I’m going to keep writing about it. The Democratic party has tried valiantly to move to the center in an attempt to convince “middle America” that they are not hostile to their values. After the electoral debacle of the 80’s it seemed like a good idea and it gave Clinton the opportunity to slip in under the wire in 1992 under very opportune circumstances. But, this was all contingent upon the idea of a “new South” born of modern ideas and a dynamic economy. Those conditions seem to have manifested themselves differently than forecasted (mostly, in my view, because of the rise of talk radio) and I think it’s time that we made some adjustments.

We are beginning to look like Charlie Brown with the football. We need to recognise what these people really want from us.

Kevin Drum wonders why we don’t tweak the abortion and porn issues to peel away some of the values voters from the Republicans. Linking to Matt Yglesias’s piece today in which he elaborates on his red state “chump” thesis in which he points out that the Republicans never deliver much to the conservative Christians, Kevin says:

There’s a germ of an idea here, but it needs to be teased out. The abortion point is a good one, for example. Liberals are in favor of choice, not in favor of abortion per se, so why shouldn’t we talk more often about policies that reduce the need for abortions while continuing to defend the right of choice itself? This won’t impress the hardcore evangelicals, of course, but it might appeal to some of their more moderate neighbors. Ditto for porn.

Gay rights and feminisim are another thing entirely. Liberals are just fundamentally in favor of this stuff, and we shouldn’t even think about trying to talk our way around it. If we lose votes for it, we lose votes for it.

Basically, then, I think Matt has a point worth thinking about, but we have to figure out which issues it applies to. Abortion and porn are good examples, and that’s why master politician Bill Clinton talked about making abortion “safe, legal, and rare” and supported anti-porn measures like the V-chip. Neither of these things infringed on any liberal principles, but they did address some of the real-world concerns of those ordinary heartland voters we hear so much about.

The fundamental problem is that the super Christians won’t compromise on principle and the rest of these “values voters” are hypocrites. Nobody bought the v-chip in red state America or anywhere else. They don’t want to take responsibility for what comes into their TV’s, they want to hector people for “forcing” them to watch these horrible things while they pass the popcorn. These same people listen to Rush refer to Abu Ghraib as “blowing off steam” and think that Bill O’Reilly is a salt of the earth regular guy despite his little obsession with porn stars. There’s your heartland values for you and they look surprisingly like the values you see on your television set. That’s because they are.

“Heartland values” is just another world for tribal identity. And this division is about crying Uncle.

Here’s a passage from Lincoln’s speech at the Cooper Union (thanks CRL) in 1860. Tell me if this doesn’t strike a chord:

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

So what else is new? We are dealing with an absolutist culture that demands total capitulation or nothing. Compromise will not work and it certainly will not work on these “values” issues. (Indeed, I think it’s part of what makes us look weak to some other factions who might be willing to vote for us.) This is the same old shit over and over and over again. We backed off on the death penalty, gun control, welfare, affirmative action and here we are with a new slate of issues about gays. Tomorrow it will be creationism. Until we realize that their condition is that we FULLY EMBRACE their cultural dominance in both word and deed, they will not be satisfied.

It is not enough that they be left alone to do what they choose. We must join them and do it thoroughly and with fervor. No amount of tweaking will work. Their real beef is psychological and tribal. Issues are fungible.