Month: January 2021

This post by my old pal Pastor Dan from yesterday is worth thinking about.

Because as everyone knows, if you want to be widely read, the time to post is the day before a major holiday, I want to share some thoughts on this terrific (long) essay be @karen_stenner:

Stenner is a political psychologist studying authoritarianism, and as such, she provides what not many sources on the subject do: insight into the *why* of authoritariansim.

According to Stenner, about 30% of all people have personalities that are predisposed to authoritarianism. She says that seems to be the case across cultures, and importantly, those traits are found on *both* the right *and* the left.

One of Stenner’s studies found that about 14% of left-wingers in the EU have an authoritarian bent, compared to 19% of right-wingers. According to her, it’s about the same in the US. We’ll come back to this point.

So what are these authoritarian traits? Basically, it’s a need for “oneness and sameness.” Authoritarians want everyone everywhere to be singing from the same hymnal.

I think this is why so many older church people are so nostalgic for the “good old days” of the 1950’s and 60’s, when things were much more conformist.

This does indeed play out in racism, but Stenner argues that it’s actually bigger than that: it’s what she calls “difference-ism,” an inability to accept diversity and difference.

If you’ve ever lived in a small town or a rural area, you know exactly what she’s talking about. Some folks don’t like *anybody* who’s too different from them.

The important point, of course, is that this is exactly the opposite direction of the one global society is moving in. Diversity and difference and the celebration of such are becoming a bigger part of social life.

Stenner says that shift in society has essentially exceeded authoritarians’ ability to cope. I don’t think she mentions it, but I’m sure the post-2008 financial crisis didn’t do wonders on this score, either.

Last point of summary, and then we’ll move into some application. Stenner says “authoritarians concern themselves obsessively with…’normative order,'” in other words, the “common authority and shared values” that create a unified society.

This is why authoritarians often rally around religious and nationalistic symbols such as the cross or the flag: they’re meant to express a common “us” bringing people together.

But it works in other ways too. If you stop to listen to the way some leftists talk about economic equality, you quickly realize that “the 99%” embodies what are supposed to be shared values of the community over and against the “them” in the 1%.

I should say *often* embodies, not everyone on the left does this, but you catch my drift.

Whoops, sorry, one more thing to understand. Authoritarianism and conservatism are not the same thing. Conservatives want things to change slowly, authoritarians want everyone to be the same.

To give a concrete example, I’m a relatively conservative Democrat in that I don’t think it’s necessary to burn the party or the government to the ground for the sake of reform. I prefer gradual change. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But I’m *not* an authoritarian in that it doesn’t bother me that my daughter is bi, and I don’t mind living in racially diverse neighborhoods. As a matter of fact, where I live now is too damn white.

Stenner is careful to make this distinction first because it helps us understand some of the gradations of the GOP and conservatism: there is in fact a difference between establishment Republicans and Trumpers.

But it also helps explain some of the apparent contradictions of the Trump era. Small-state conservatives dislike government handouts, Stenner says, but authoritarians don’t mind them a bit, as long as they go to “us” and not “them.”

Likewise, tradcons want to change things slowly, but authoritarians are just fine on fast, even revolutionary, change. The idiots walking around with assault rifles are an extreme example of this feature.

I hope it’s starting to become clear how well this framework fits the current moment. Again, according to Stenner, authoritarians are ordinarily quiet, community-minded folks who can be activated by threats to perceived norms and by strong leaders who offer protection from same.

This fits well with my experience. Rural/working-class church folks are some of the most supportive members of their communities. They take care of their own and expect their churches to do the same. Woe betide you though if they get the idea that you’re not behind them 110%.

This is why you see the “We back the blue” signs way out in the countryside where the last time anyone challenged the cops, they were hauling moonshine across the county line.

There’s not actually a threat to police authority in rural Wisconsin or wherever. But BLM and other protests against police violence is a perceived threat to (racialized) social norms, and therefore must be vigorously contested.

It’s also why we see small towns and rural areas turning on their public health leaders:

Embracing mask mandates is for many stepping out against the community and its norms. Irrational, but there it is.

We could on all day with this—it really is a rich framework—but let’s focus in on just a few more applications.

One is that because about 1/3 of any given society has these authoritarian tendencies—which again, cut across left/right lines—democracies are under constant threat, and as we’ve seen America is certainly no exception to that rule.

As Stenner points out, Trump made hay in 2016 with self-described *liberals* who perceived threats to social norms. 49% who saw low or mild threats went for Trump, and *66%* of those who saw high threat.

So it doesn’t take much of a coalition to push authoritarianism to the front, especially in a counter-majoritarian system like ours.

Fortunately for us, it doesn’t seem to happen that often. It takes the right circumstances and the right strongman. Doesn’t mean there’s no reason for concern, but typically, it doesn’t all come together.

Originally tweeted by Daniel Schultz (@pastordan) on December 31, 2020.

It doesn’t happen often. But what we’re seeing with this monumental temper tantrum over the election, endorsed by the mainstream GOP, is basically a “stab in the back” myth in the making. Traditionally, that hasn’t gone well.

Do not take your eyes off of this phenomenon. It never happens cleanly in one fell swoop. It happens over time and then all at once. Hitler’s Beer Hall putsch was in 1923. He came to power ten years later.

John Thune has been one of Trump’s most loyal henchman. This is the thanks he gets:

I hope to see the great Governor of South Dakota @KristiNoem, run against RINO @SenJohnThune, in the upcoming 2022 Primary. She would do a fantastic job in the U.S. Senate, but if not Kristi, others are already lining up. South Dakota wants strong leadership, NOW!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2021

Thune is pretty popular and Trump may not have the power he thinks he will have. But I think it’s obvious that Trump is signaling that he’s not going anywhere.

This article by Matt Ford in The New Republic is probably right:

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley announced on Wednesday that he would take the courageous step of trying to overthrow an American election. When Congress formally counts the Electoral College votes on January 6, Hawley said he would try to challenge at least one state’s results, which requires at least one member of the House and Senate each. There aren’t enough votes in either chamber to toss out a state result, so the maneuver will only delay President-elect Joe Biden’s final victory by a few more hours.

“I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws,” Hawley said in a statement. “And I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden. At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections. But Congress has so far failed to act.”

This move is unsurprising from Hawley, who has been running for president ever since he arrived in Washington. Trump is using his lies about voter fraud as a litmus test of sorts for GOP office-holders across the country, implicitly conditioning his future political support for them on their willingness to support his false claims about the 2020 election. For ambitious conservatives like Hawley who aspire to even higher office, undermining the legitimacy of this election is just another step on the path to winning the next one.

There’s a feedback loop of sorts at work here: The more that Republicans validate Trump’s Lost Cause narrative now, the more they will have to do so in the future. “The idea that the election was stolen from Trump will be maintained as a kind of foundation myth of the post-Trump era—one that Republicans will have to tiptoe around for years,” The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent wrote on Wednesday. There is just one problem with this calculation by 2024 hopefuls: Trump himself isn’t going anywhere.

A 2024 bid by Trump himself wouldn’t be wholly unprecedented. Grover Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888, then defeated him for a second non-consecutive term in 1892. Theodore Roosevelt ran against William Howard Taft, his own successor, in 1912. But most presidents since World War II have served two terms, and the few who’ve lost their re-election bid haven’t sought to return to office again. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush transitioned into elder statesmen roles after their defeats, mixing semi-retirement hobbies with humanitarian and diplomatic activities. They and other ex-presidents also generally avoided involvement in electoral politics, either out of respect for their successors or relief at escaping from it.

Can you imagine Trump taking such a placid, secondary role in public life? All of his moves so far suggest that, at minimum, he wants to remain the axial figure in Republican politics for the foreseeable future. Trump hasn’t yet publicly signaled that he would run again in 2024, of course. Such a move would effectively concede that he lost this election, after all. But he has reportedly told aides that he would do so in private, perhaps even announcing the decision on Inauguration Day to steal some of Biden’s thunder. His false claims about this election are also a lucrative fundraising tool—more than $200 million, and counting—as he amasses a financial war chest for the future. Even serious legal trouble may not deter Trump from mounting a 2024 bid: Socialist candidate Eugene Debs ran for president in 1920 from an Indiana prison and won 3 percent of the vote.

If Hawley and his cohorts genuinely believed there was electoral fraud, their moves would be slightly more defensible. But all of the available evidence suggests that cynical self-interest is the real motive at play. Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican and an occasional critic of Trump, confirmed those suspicions in a Facebook post on Wednesday night. “When we talk in private, I haven’t heard a single Congressional Republican allege that the election results were fraudulent—not one,” he wrote. “Instead, I hear them talk about their worries about how they will ‘look’ to President Trump’s most ardent supporters.”

Most of Sasse’s post was devoted to discussing why Trump’s claims of election fraud didn’t hold water. But he also threw an implicit jab at grandstanding by Hawley and other “institutional arsonist” members of Congress. “Let’s be clear what is happening here: We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage,” Sasse wrote. “But they’re wrong—and this issue is bigger than anyone’s personal ambitions. Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.”

The Trump era is, in some respects, a long chain of Faustian bargains between various prominent conservatives and the soon-to-be-former president. They embraced an incompetent authoritarian in exchange for Supreme Court seats, a Senate majority, tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and raw political influence. Now Josh Hawley is cutting a deal with the devil—except this time, the devil may be the one who knocks him out of the running in 2024.

Sasse is also positioning himself for president by saying this, so he’s also being self-serving. But, at least, he isn’t trying to destroy democracy in this instance as Hawley is.

I think Ford is right. Trump isn’t going to graciously pass the baton to the next generation. In fact, I don’t think he’d even graciously pass it on to his own offspring.

Trump’s guiding philosophy in life is “get even.” He’s established the narrative that he was cheated out of his 2nd term and he’s not going to let it go. Whether he actually runs depends upon circumstances but let’s not kid ourselves that he’s just done. He is not.

I have to admit that I’m going to enjoy the massive battle that’s going to take place among the GOP 2024 hopefuls. I think it’s going to be a bloody, bloody fight and I would be very surprised if Josh Hawley comes out on top. He seems to think Trump’s appeal is about issues.

Lol!

Many thanks to all of you who contributed to the Happy Hollandaise Extravaganza this year. Your support means the world to me and I never take it for granted. Thank you so, so much.

And thanks once again to my morning man Tom. You are the best and this blog would not be the same without you. And also to my old pal Dennis “Top Ten” Hartley. You’re indefatigable search for the best movies, old and new, has never been more valuable. And to my occasional contributors tristero, Spocko and Batocchio, thank you so much for stepping in from time to time with your acerbic wit, calls to action and historical observations. This place is the richer for it.

And much gratitude to the readers who stick with me year after year. It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this thing together for so long but here we are, still watching in wonder (and horror) at the great events of our time. Thanks to all of you, we’ll keep doing it for another year. And this one is almost certain to be better than the last. It’s hard to imagine it could be any worse.

Cheers,
digby

(continued from earlier this morning)

Rural, poorer, less-populated counties get less attention from larger, better-funded campaigns and from underfunded state party organizations. They want bang for their fundraised bucks, so they focus on winning and holding population centers. You may recall that was U.S. strategy in Vietnam. You may also recall how that worked out.

Are rural areas more Republican by nature or because Democratic presence there is so weak? Is Democratic presence there so weak because the area is so Republican or because Democrats invest little in strengthening it? I don’t know. But I’d like to find out.

This is not just a matter of better national messaging or policy, but a matter of local presence. Internet service is still spotty in rural America. The dominant voices heard out there are church, satellite TV and radio. A lot of the radio is gospel and conservative talk. Democrats don’t show up to compete, and there is no funding for them to. Progressive organizers who might want to have little financial support and often little Democratic organization to lean on.

Local Democratic candidates have to hope what little organization there is in rural counties will be worth a damn and/or have to build a campaign organization for themselves from scratch. Statewide candidates scatter a few yard signs and expect them to make up for decades of “othering” by conservative media. Too few Democrats consistently showing up with smiles and without tails and horns makes it difficult to counter the Republican narrative and narrow the GOP’s political advantage in rural America.

Groups like Indivisible Appalachian Ohio do that by meeting hurting people’s needs first and consistently. Being nonpartisan makes it easier to get food donations from grocery chains and to partner with food banks. It is a way to change hearts and minds over time. But independent groups like this operate independently because they must. Progressive political efforts remain diffused among such groups.

Physical infrastructure is not the only need on which Democrats need focus.

Political Survivor – Part 2
by Tom Sullivan

(Read Part 1 here.)

Kathy Sinclair knew the Courthouse Gang planned to nominate Randy Flack for chair of Buncombe County’s Democratic committee in April 2007. Flack was one of Rep. Heath Shuler’s district representatives and a longtime friend. Progressives would not contest that choice. They still wanted the 1st vice-chair position, which by state party rules had to be of the opposite sex from the chairman. From that perch, Sinclair could organize precincts and begin building towards November 2008.

Sinclair and her team (this writer included) recruited a second slate of candidates but planned to endorse Flack to minimize blowback.

With 300 flyers with the alternative slate printed, there would be one in every seat where the annual convention took place. Candidates prepared speeches and recruited friends to nominate them.

But Shuler’s chief of staff, Hayden Rogers, got wind Flack planned to run for county chairman. With the Hatch Act to consider, Rogers gave Flack a choice between working for his longtime friend or serving as county chair. A week ahead of the convention, Flack bowed out.

Without a chair candidate, the insiders’ slate fell apart. Sinclair had another in reserve.

By then the Courthouse knew of the challenge. Sinclair offered to pull their fat out of the fire. The Courthouse agreed to “allow” her to serve as chair. The remaining slate became a combination of the retiring chair’s slate and hers. Progressives had hoped to provide delegates a real choice in 2007. Ironically, there was only the compromise slate left by Saturday. Only because Sinclair’s team was prepared.

Sinclair won the chairmanship at the convention by acclamation. In the county courthouse.

Sinclair had persisted. She had learned from her defeat. “Those progressives” had strategized and organized. When the party establishment faltered, they were positioned.

That was not the end of the transition struggle. But by 2011 when Otto DeBruhl, the longtime Register of Deeds and local Democratic “godfather,” announced his retirement, a team of Obama campaign veterans was poised to make a move. Twenty-seven year-old Drew Reisinger set up a campaign overnight, lobbied the executive committee, and won the election to serve out the unexpired term. Reisinger still holds the position today.

Progressives had no animosity towards the “old guard.” They simply wanted their chance to lead. Their predecessors had not adapted to the new political climate and shifting demographics. They lamented the dearth of young people in the organization even as they gave them no path to leadership.

I wrote last December:

The real split is between top-down leaders and bottom-up, grassroots activists expected to wait their turn. A top-down establishment holding onto the past with white knuckles is not going to grow the party out of the minority status in which it finds itself. The familiar and comfortable is not what the electorate is thirsting for. Years of service is not enough. Voters want bold, forward-looking leadership. Offer a new generation of activists something less and they’ll stay away. That’s not a promising vehicle for change to anyone under 40 years old.

Jeff Rose, a talented, 32-year-old Bernie Sanders organizer, became Buncombe County Democrats’ new county chair in April 2017. Sinclair recruited him to replace her after her third term. She later ran for and won the chairmanship of NC District 11 against veteran Luke Hyde. Her leadership team included several officers under 35.

“I don’t own this seat. The seat is not mine,” Sinclair says. “If you are going to build for the future, you’ve got to have a pipeline of people” to make grassroots politics sustainable. “We opened the doors.”

Even progressive elected Democrats needed convincing to support the transition. They’d come to count on Sinclair’s fierce work ethic for their re-elections. When friends asked last January when she expected to start working on the 2016 elections, Sinclair could reply, “We started working on 2016 the day after the election in 2014.”

An election protection attorney visiting from Boston on Election Day 2014 said he’d never seen an operation like Buncombe’s. County Democrats picked up two state House seats on a day Democrats across the country took a shellacking.

But an organization doesn’t thrive when leaders hang on beyond their time. Nor will young activists join one with the institutional vigor of a men’s fraternal organization.

The DNC has not yet learned that lesson. Neither have the DSCC, the DCCC, or their state-based counterparts. Their focus is caucus-building – more Democratic butts in legislative seats – and not movement building. It’s no fun serving in the minority of a legislature dominated by committed antagonists, and they will support good fundraisers before good candidates. But caucus-building doesn’t inspire voters or volunteers.

If there is a moral of this story, it is this. If progressives expect to reform the Democratic Party’s culture and generate new dynamism, it will take commitment and work. Probably at the county and state levels first. Sorry.

This is political “Survivor.” Outwit. Outplay. Outlast. Commit to it and your position will advance. Those who don’t show up to play forfeit.

The Happy Hollandaise fundraiser ends today, so if you’re of a mind to kick in a little something below or at the snail mail address on the sidebar, you will help make 2021 brighter.

The two-part post today is from this time three years ago. It comes back to me as I consider how to move past 2020. One feature of progressive organizing that leaves the movement an alphabet soup of dispersed interest groups is the perpetual lack of funding for keeping talented activists fed and in the field pulling in the same direction.

An Obama 2008 organizer friend got picked up by Organizing for America after the election. OFA paid him to keep WNC Obama activists active. (We shared an adventure the day of the ACA vote. ) That is until funding got cut and he had to find a nonpolitical job to pay the bills between campaigns. What a loss. Another talented activist here won a job as Register of Deeds (more in Part 2). He’s now nationally recognized and got a life stable enough to raise a family in the area. But those jobs are few and far between. So many activists burn themselves out in their twenties and leave politics for a roof and food and a family.

The more ambitious and connected set up their own nonprofits as Stacey Abrams did in Georgia. Fundraising pays salaries and keeps talented activists in the fight. Or rather in a slew of fights: from climate activism to clean energy to voting rights to health care. At election time, coordinating between the various players on the ground is a nightmare. One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing and, depending on the group’s tax status, is not allowed tp coordinate with campaigns. Duplication of efforts seems the rule rather than the exception. (See tweet image above.)

Maybe it is naive (or wishful) thinking, but for all the never-ending complaints about lack of persistent progressive infrastructure, little attention gets paid to improving the infrastructure that does exist by state law (where it exists) at the county level: county committees. Celebrated for flipping blue by 12,000 votes in 2020, under 100 of Georgia’s 159 counties have Democratic county committees with any organization or digital presence enough to reach them (email, Facebook, web page, etc.). Many are rural and tiny. Fifteen counties are under 10,000 in population. (Okay, Nebraska has 66 like that, with a dozen under 10,000.) But those Georgia counties have combined populations of 1.1 million. (Nebraska’s hold fewer than 300,000.) Is organizing to boost rural turnout in states like Georgia inefficient money-wise? Probably. So is ceding rural legislative seats to the GOP without a fight. Democrats running statewide don’t necessarily have to win out there. They only have to shave GOP margins, but they might even turn red legislatures purple in the process.

But you can’t compete if you don’t show up to play.

Political Survivor
by Tom Sullivan

Part 1 of 2

From a post last December:

There is a lot of “old-boyism” in party politics. Mostly because people who have the time and/or resources to pursue party work are older. But older doesn’t always mean more skilled; experienced doesn’t always mean the right kind.

Political leaders tend to hang onto power and neglect cultivating heirs who have mastered technologies they don’t understand. They would rather turn over the reins to trusted chums. Kathy Sinclair was not in the club.

Sinclair had been the driving force in organizing an unofficial John Kerry campaign in western North Carolina in 2004. The newcomer from Chicago attended a meetup at a local tavern, and with no prior experience organized hundreds of volunteers in a region that would not be considered a part of a swing state until 2008.

Dennis Kucinich winning the presidential caucus here in 2004 was a deep embarrassment to seasoned party hands. Didn’t “those progressives” know favorite-son John Edwards was supposed to win? A Kucinich convention delegate won a key seat on the county executive board the next year, but bristled at the top-down culture. Party leaders stonewalled her, as she saw it, and she resigned.

The old boys got their club back. It didn’t last.

The Democratic committee in Buncombe County, NC began the transition to a more grassroots organization around 2007. It is a transition the DNC has yet to make nationally. Insiders often don’t know when it is time to pass the baton. They have forgotten what skilled managers know. Training their replacements is a key responsibility.

The problem here was, as it is nationally, lack of succession planning. Insiders hold power so closely for so long that there is no one to pass the baton to except another of their graying cohort.

When Ellie Richard, the Kucinich delegate, resigned her position as 1st vice chair in 2006, Sinclair, by then party secretary, ran to fill the vacancy. The position would give her responsibility for organizing precincts across the county, a power held closely by what amounted to a shadow party known downtown as the Courthouse Gang.

In North Carolina, when partisan elected officials die or resign their seats, members of their local committee elect a replacement for appointment by the governor. Keeping tight rein on who held those voting positions ensured the Courthouse could control who was in control. For Democrats, the same group votes to fill county committee vacancies.

With her organizing bona fides and name recognition, Sinclair figured the open position was within reach. She gathered names of committee members and began making phone calls to ask for their votes.

The county chairman was coy about Sinclair’s chances. All he would tell me was, “Let’s just say, she’ll have competition.”

The Saturday morning of the special election, the party headquarters was filled to bursting. Sinclair’s stunned supporters whispered, “Who are these people?” Precinct officers they had never seen at headquarters appeared for this vote, summoned by the Courthouse.

Party veterans presented one of their own: JoAnn Morgan, a native, a Courthouse employee and former county chair. After a tense relationship with progressive activists, the Courthouse was re-exerting control.

Sinclair lost. The vote wasn’t even close. Progressives were blindsided, and the defeat was crushing. Sinclair went home to lick her wounds.

For many activists, that would have been the end. Nevertheless, she persisted.

The fall of 2006 was a “blue moon” election in North Carolina (as 2018 will be). There were no national or statewide races in contention. The 11th District race for Congress was, locally, the marquee race atop the ticket.

Former NFL quarterback Heath Shuler ran against and defeated Rep. Charles Taylor, an eight-term Republican and associate of Russian bankers. Shuler’s was an energetic and well-funded campaign. (Full disclosure: As NCDP’s Get Out The Vote Coordinator for NC-11, I answered to the campaign.)

Progressives outside the South may have a low opinion of Shuler. (The Blue Dog left Congress in 2013 to become a Duke Energy lobbyist for a few years.) Still, sending home “Chainsaw Charlie” was a shot in the arm to local Democrats. Progressive campaign veterans now had a win under their belts and solid organizing chops.

In December 2006, a core team met at a local Greek restaurant to plan taking on the Courthouse in the party committee’s 2007 spring elections.

By established practice, the county chair appointed a committee to “nominate” a slate of candidates for the six county executive posts. The list would be presented to the county convention essentially as a fait accompli. Progressives knew anyone named was likely in the pocket of the shadow party. Convention delegates deserved a choice. Sinclair and company planned to give them one.

Ensuring continuity of leadership is the chair’s responsibility, but maintaining control was a Courthouse goal. The last thing old party hands want is democracy breaking out in the Democratic Party. “Division in the party” is the traditional bugaboo veterans invoke to discourage contested races. Contested races here meant the Courthouse might not get its way.

In 2007, it would not.

(conclusion tomorrow)

The Happy Hollandaise fundraiser ends today, so if you’re of a mind to kick in a little something below or at the snail mail address on the sidebar, you will help make 2021 brighter.