Correction
Remember the post I wrote a month or so ago about the romance novelist who was rousted by the Patriot Act police? It turns out that it was A Convenient Smoke Screen.
She was actually busted for collecting disability while making money writing, using her husbands social security number. Or at least that’s what the government says.
Kerry Speaks
John Kerry is asking for our help to Protect Every Child in America. Sign the petition.
People have been talking a great deal about behaving as a real opposition party, presenting alternate plans, boldly defining ourselves as a government in exile. This is a smart politics. There is a leadership vacuum in the Party and if John Kerry wants to step in, I say more power to him. But for a few thousand votes in Ohio, we’d be calling him President-elect Kerry today.
This is a classy move from a classy guy. Perhaps that’s not in fashion at the moment but it means a lot to me.
I hate puritanism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism. I can’t stand the idea that free adults aren’t allowed to make their own choices about what to read, watch and think.
A while back, I wrote about Academy Award-winning writer and director Bill Condon who has produced a brilliant film on the life and work of sex-researcher Alfred Kinsey. Here are the first and second links to my posts about this important film and director.
I saw this film as one that depicted the ongoing battle in our society between rationality and science on one hand versus dogma and a strain of empirically-hostile religious extremism on the other.
Well, a cold current of censorship has now just hit even New York’s flagship PBS station, WNET Channel 13.
I expect this crap from corporate media outlets who don’t want to offend their advertisers and so try to play both sides as much as possible. But, PBS was begun for the very reason that they would be above such parochial concerns. Now, even in New York, the home of blue state elitism, they are opting for pedestrian conformism. If I were a New Yorker I might just have to decline to support them during the next pledge drive.
I do have a couple of questions for Real America on this. If vast numbers of middle Americans are upset about the loose morals on television, how can we explain this:
Parents who own a TV set manufactured after January 1, 2000 have a blocking technology called a V-chip that can be programmed to screen out shows with TV ratings they deem inappropriate.
By 2001, 2 out of 5 parents (40%) owned a V-Chip TV set and 7% had used it to monitor their children’s TV viewing. Of all parents who have a V-Chip TV set, more than half (53%) don’t know it. Of all parents who know they have a V-Chip TV set, two-thirds know(64%) have chosen not to use it and one-third (36%) have used it.
The two most common reasons parents give for not using the V-Chip are that an adult is usually nearby when their children watch TV, and that they trust their children to make their own decisions.
Approximately one-third of parents with home Internet connections have installed blocking technology such as filtering software or Internet Service Provider (ISP) controls to prevent children from accessing objectionable material.
It sure sounds to me as if somebody’s not taking personal responsibility for what their children are watching.
Unless, of course, this isn’t about children at all. In which case this is really about a bunch of tightassed, busybodies sticking their noses where they don’t belong because they want to control everybody’s lives.
Welcome to Massachusetts, Red States. Massachusetts circa 1692, that is.
MYOB
Atrios and Yglesias make an argument for the Democratic Party to position itself on the side of personal freedom. Those who read this blog know I believe that this is a fertile field for us in this political environment.
Individual freedom is as All-American as apple pie and Let The Eagle Soar. The corporate police state theocracy is hostile to that All-American “value” and it is going to begin to encroach on people in ways that they will feel in their personal lives. There are at least three million votes there. Possibly many millions more. Plenty of Americans don’t like being told how to live their lives by a bunch of priests, politicians or bureaucrats. And it ain’t all about taxes.
The Stupidest People On The Planet:
France
Favorable 25%
Unfavorable 57%
United Nations
Favorable 44%
Unfavorable 42%
France
Ally 22%
Enemy 31%
In Between 43%
United Nations
Ally 33%
Enemy 17%
In Between 47%
Golly Monsieur DeLay, you sure do have a purdy name. I hope one of your dipshit constituents doesn’t get it in his head that you are the enemy.
I Know You Are But What Am I
Kevin Drum discusses the new wingnut political correctness about calling people who support right wing Israeli policy, “Likudniks” — which is like calling people who believe in affirmative action “Democrats.” It may be slightly imprecise, but it’s not racist.
But this is becoming common on the right and you can tell even they know it’s a stupid bully taunt. When wingnut freaks like Ann Coulter pull this stuff out of her strappy little thong, she can hardly keep a straight face.
From the November 17 edition of FOX News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes:
COULTER: I don’t know why you [Beckel] keep talking about [the unfair treatment received by] Bill Clinton when your party — I mean, I understand why you’d like to change the subject, but your party is being biased and condescending about a black woman.
[…]
COULTER: I understand why you are so terrified of letting us point out what racists the Democrats are and how they have a big problem with black women.
BECKEL: You better be damn careful about using that word. I’ll tell you something, I worked in the civil rights movement.
COULTER: Sean, stop him!
SEAN HANNITY (co-host): Bob — Bob —
BECKEL: When you were sitting in your little schools up in New England.
HANNITY: Bob —
COULTER: I keep trying to get to this.
BECKEL: Don’t start with me about that. Ann, you just crossed the line.
HANNITY: Bob — Bob —
COULTER: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[…]
COULTER: It goes beyond the cartoons. It goes to the fact that…
ALAN COLMES (co-host): Bob Beckel.
COULTER: … it is Condoleezza Rice who keeps being attacked for not being the most qualified person for the job, as I know Clarence Thomas was. No one ever said that about Warren Christopher. What were his qualifications for the job?
[…]
COULTER: You’re [Beckel] racist. You do the same thing with Clarence Thomas.
[…]
COULTER: You keep talking about these cartoons. I’d only seen one of them before this program tonight. And I said I think liberals have a problem with blacks. They have a little race issue going on here.
You know, it’s often said that blacks feel like they have to be twice as good as whites for the same position. Well, when it comes to blacks working for a Republican administration, that’s true. They have to be 10 times as good or they have their credentials questioned [by liberals]. That really is…
COLMES: You think liberals have a problem with blacks?
COULTER: … the puppet Bush.
COLMES: Do you think liberals have a problem with blacks? You want to make that statement in a vacuum?
COULTER: Yes. No, I think I’ve given a few examples, and I’ll give more. There’s Clarence Thomas, who was constantly made fun of, is he the most qualified one of the job. I don’t remember anybody ever asking that of Justice William Brennan or [David] Souter.
[…]
COULTER: Dick Clarke, the flamboyant opponent of the Bush administration, came out with a book earlier this year, claiming that Condoleezza Rice, when he talked to her about Al Qaeda, her face showed that she was perplexed, that she had never heard of Al Qaeda before.
Can you imagine somebody saying that about, you know, Wolfowitz? No. That’s my fourth example now of liberals having a problem with blacks.
[…]
BECKEL: I have no problem with her [Rice] because she’s black. I have a problem with her because I don’t think she’s up to the job [of secretary of state]. Do not begin to say that people like me are racist when I spent a lot of time out in the vineyards on the civil rights movement.
I don’t think you can type one credential where you’ve had — You’ve got to be careful here, Ann.
COULTER: And you listen to jazz
She is amazing. Notice how she characterized “Dick” Clarke as “flamboyant” while she’s admonishing Beckel for being a bigot. People should not argue with her, they should laugh at her. She’s a clown.
This notion that if you criticize minority Republicans, you are a racist is not confined to the lunatic fringe, however. It is one of their talking points and we are going to be hearing a lot more of it. They are using the language of liberalism to beat liberals over the head. But two can play at that game.
In our new Dadaesque politics we should expect this absurd stuff and be prepared to counter. Beckel should have immediately accused Coulter of being unpatriotic for criticizing President Clinton.
PoMo Puffery
In his post Rodeo Bloodbath, James Wolcott brings up something that’s been making my gorge rise for the last few days — this fetishization of the “Marlboro Man” GI photo. Apparently it’s making bunches of Real Americans all moist and quivery.
It is, however, nothing more than warmed over WWII movie iconography which even news editors are eager to admit:
One cited the “strong emotional pull, close and intimate.” Another noted the intensity in his eyes, calling the Marine “a modern-day Robert Mitchum.” Another said, “You can almost feel what he feels. This is war. This is real life.”
What exactly are they teaching in J-School these days? “He’s a modern-day Robert Mitchum.” “It’s real.”
As a reader reminded me the other day, it isn’t reality, it’s hyperreality. Robert Mitchum played the role of GI Joe in the movies. Now we have real GI’s being iconized for looking like Robert Mitchum.
What a sad confused culture we have become.
The Ownership Society
Atrios notes the happy news that the AEI administration is thinking of dropping the business tax deduction for empoyer-provided health insurance in order to pay for making interest, dividends and capitals gains tax free.
I don’t know what he’s so unhappy about, though. George W. Bush is just trying to empower the working man here. With those fancy new medical savings accounts, the guy who works at Pep Boys and his wife who works in the hospital gift shop will be able to save the 10k a year (tax free!) to pay for his wife and 2 kids’ health insurance. Then he’ll be a member of the ownership society because he’ll own his own health insurance policy. Isn’t that great?
I’m assuming, of course, that if employers drop health insurance they will then be required to give their employees a raise in the amount of what they were paying for their health care, less the tax break. They will do that, won’t they? Of course they will. Otherwise, these working people will be forced to “save” money that they don’t have. That wouldn’t be right.
But if that happens let’s face it, if you can’t afford to make ends meet that’s what churches are for. Be good and maybe you’ll be allowed some charity. (Or you’ll be allowed to pray for some, anyway.) Meanwhile, just work harder. Like our good ole boy, Real American president who knows the meaning of hard earned dollar. He’s tough, tough, tough and we have to be tough just like him. Why, a real man would rather gnaw off his leg or put his wife out of her misery than have his boss pay for his health insurance. This whole issue is an excuse for lazy Democrat losers looking for a handout.
Decidedly Different
Christopher Hayes spent time with undecided voters in Wisconsin and lived to tell the tale. His experience confirms my impression that these people were pretty stupid, but they are stupid in interesting and unusual ways I didn’t expect.
Undecided voters aren’t as rational as you think. Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We’re giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man’s house, she still couldn’t make sense of his decision.
[…]
Undecided voters do care about politics; they just don’t enjoy politics…The mere fact that you’re reading this article right now suggests that you not only think politics is important, but you actually like it. You read the paper and listen to political radio and talk about politics at parties. In other words, you view politics the way a lot of people view cooking or sports or opera: as a hobby. Most undecided voters, by contrast, seem to view politics the way I view laundry. While I understand that to be a functioning member of society I have to do my laundry, and I always eventually get it done, I’ll never do it before every last piece of clean clothing is dirty, as I find the entire business to be a chore. A significant number of undecided voters, I think, view politics in exactly this way: as a chore, a duty, something that must be done but is altogether unpleasant, and therefore something best put off for as long as possible.
A disturbing number of undecided voters are crypto-racist isolationists. In the age of the war on terror and the war in Iraq, pundits agreed that this would be the most foreign policy-oriented election in a generation–and polling throughout the summer seemed to bear that out…But just because voters were unusually concerned about foreign policy didn’t mean they had fundamentally shifted their outlook on world affairs. In fact, among undecided voters, I encountered a consistent and surprising isolationism–an isolationism that September 11 was supposed to have made obsolete everywhere but the left and right fringes of the political spectrum.
[…]
In fact, there was a disturbing trend among undecided voters–as well as some Kerry supporters–towards an opposition to the Iraq war based largely on the ugliest of rationales. I had one conversation with an undecided, sixtyish, white voter whose wife was voting for Kerry. When I mentioned the “mess in Iraq” he lit up. “We should have gone through Iraq like shit through tinfoil,” he said, leaning hard on the railing of his porch. As I tried to make sense of the mental image this evoked, he continued: “I mean we should have dominated the place; that’s the only thing these people understand. … Teaching democracy to Arabs is like teaching the alphabet to rats.”
That may have been the most explicit articulation I heard of this mindset–but it wasn’t an isolated incident. A few days later, someone told me that he wished we could put Saddam back in power because he “knew how to rule these people.” While Bush’s rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy played well with blue-state liberal hawks and red-state Christian conservatives who are inclined towards a missionary view of world affairs, it seemed to fall flat among the undecided voters I spoke with. This was not merely the view of the odd kook; it was a common theme I heard from all different kinds of undecided voters.
[…]
The worse things got in Iraq, the better things got for Bush. Liberal commentators, and even many conservative ones, assumed, not unreasonably, that the awful situation in Iraq would prove to be the president’s undoing. But I found that the very severity and intractability of the Iraq disaster helped Bush because it induced a kind of fatalism about the possibility of progress.
[…]
To be sure, maybe they simply thought Kerry’s promise to bring in allies was a lame idea–after all, many well-informed observers did. But I became convinced that there was something else at play here, because undecided voters extended the same logic to other seemingly intractable problems, like the deficit or health care. On these issues, too, undecideds recognized the severity of the situation–but precisely because they understood the severity, they were inclined to be skeptical of Kerry’s ability to fix things. Undecided voters, as everyone knows, have a deep skepticism about the ability of politicians to keep their promises and solve problems. So the staggering incompetence and irresponsibility of the Bush administration and the demonstrably poor state of world affairs seemed to serve not as indictments of Bush in particular, but rather of politicians in general.
[…]
undecideds seemed oddly unwilling to hold the president accountable for his previous actions, focusing instead on the practical issue of who would have a better chance of success in the future. Because undecideds seemed uninterested in assessing responsibility for the past, Bush suffered no penalty for having made things so bad; and because undecideds were focused on, but cynical about, the future, the worse things appeared, the less inclined they were to believe that problems could be fixed–thereby nullifying the backbone of Kerry’s case. Needless to say, I found this logic maddening.
Undecided voters don’t think in terms of issues. Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the “issues.” That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross-pressured–a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for example–but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I’d just asked them to name their favorite prime number.
[…]
But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to… So I tried other ways of asking the same question: “Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what’s been happening in the country in the last four years?”
These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn’t the word “issue”; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the “political.” The undecideds I spoke to didn’t seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief–not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.
[…]
In this context, Bush’s victory, particularly on the strength of those voters who listed “values” as their number one issue, makes perfect sense. Kerry ran a campaign that was about politics: He parsed the world into political categories and offered political solutions. Bush did this too, but it wasn’t the main thrust of his campaign. Instead, the president ran on broad themes, like “character” and “morals.” Everyone feels an immediate and intuitive expertise on morals and values–we all know what’s right and wrong. But how can undecided voters evaluate a candidate on issues if they don’t even grasp what issues are?
Liberals like to point out that majorities of Americans agree with the Democratic Party on the issues, so Republicans are forced to run on character and values in order to win. (This cuts both ways: I met a large number of Bush/Feingold voters whose politics were more in line with the Republican president, but who admired the backbone and gutsiness of their Democratic senator.) But polls that ask people about issues presuppose a basic familiarity with the concept of issues–a familiarity that may not exist.
As far as I can tell, this leaves Democrats with two options: either abandon “issues” as the lynchpin of political campaigns and adopt the language of values, morals, and character as many have suggested; or begin the long-term and arduous task of rebuilding a popular, accessible political vocabulary–of convincing undecided voters to believe once again in the importance of issues. The former strategy could help the Democrats stop the bleeding in time for 2008. But the latter strategy might be necessary for the Democrats to become a majority party again.
I suspect that there are more than a few of these types of voters out there and they unfortunately gain in significance hugely with the electorate so evenly split. These are the people you reach through showbiz values. Logic, self interest, philosophy are useless. Gotta put on a better show. It’s not that hard to do.
Unconventional Wisdom
Read this from Jonathan Rausch in National Journal.
Quick post-post-election exit poll: Which of the following two statements more accurately describes what happened on November 2?
A) The election was a stunning triumph for the president, the Republicans, and (especially) social conservatives. Because the country turned to the right, President Bush received a mandate, the Republicans consolidated their dominance, and the Democrats lost touch with the country.
B) Bush and the Republicans are on thin ice. Bush barely eked out a majority, the country is still divided 50-50, and the electoral landscape has hardly changed, except in one respect: The Republican Party has shifted precariously to the right of the country, and the world, that it leads.
Usual answer: A. Correct answer: B.
For the record, only time will tell, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and all that. Still, level-headed analysis — which is not what this year’s post-election commentary produced — shows that every element of Statement A is suspect or plain wrong.
Begin with that stunning triumph. “Stunning” implies surprising. Any observers who were stunned this year lived in a cave (or on Manhattan’s Upper West Side). All year long, month after month, opinion polls averaged to give Bush a lead in the low-to-mid-single digits, depending on when the poll was taken and who took it. Only toward the end, after the debates, did the gap narrow to that now proverbial “statistical dead heat.” Even then, the statistically insignificant margin generally favored Bush. Another indicator was the University of Iowa’s electronic election market, which lets traders bet on election outcomes; it consistently showed Bush winning with a percentage in the low 50s. Rarely has an election been so unsurprising.
A triumph? Only by the anomalous standards of 2000. By any other standard, 2004 was a squeaker, given that an incumbent was on the ticket. The last conservative, polarizing Republican incumbent who slashed taxes and campaigned on resolve against a foreign enemy won 49 states and received 59 percent of the popular vote. That, of course, was Ronald Reagan, who did not need to scrounge for votes to keep his job.
Most incumbent presidents win in a walk. The prestige and visibility of the White House gives them a powerful natural advantage. Bush enjoyed the further advantage of running against a Northeastern liberal who had trouble defining himself and didn’t find the battlefield until September. By historical standards, Bush in 2004 was notably weak.
The boast that Bush is the first candidate to win a popular majority since 1988 is just pathetic. Bush is the first presidential candidate since 1988 to run without effective third-party competition, and he still barely won. No one doubts that Bill Clinton would have won a majority in his re-election bid in 1996 if not for the candidacy of Ross Perot.
A new political era? A gale-force mandate for change? More like the breezeless, stagnant air of a Washington summer. Despite much higher turnouts than in 2000, only three states switched sides — a startling stasis. Despite Bush’s win, the House of Representatives barely budged. In fact, the Republicans might have lost seats in the House had they not gerrymandered Texas. The allocation of state legislative seats between Republicans and Democrats also barely budged, maintaining close parity. The balance of governorships will change by at most one (at this writing, Washington state’s race was undecided). If that’s not stability, what would be?
In the Senate, the Democrats were routed in the South and their leader was evicted. Those were bruising blows, to be sure; but it was no secret that the Democrats had more Senate seats to defend, that most of those seats were in Republican states, and that five were open. “Early predictions were that the Republicans would pick up three to five seats overall,” notes my colleague Charlie Cook. (See NJ, 11/6/04) In the end, the Republicans picked up four.
Here is the abiding reality, confirmed rather than upset by the election returns: America is a 50-50 nation. According to the National Election Pool exit poll (the largest and probably most reliable such poll), voters identified themselves this year as 37 percent Republicans, 37 percent Democrats, and 26 percent independents. That represents a shift in Republicans’ favor, from 35-39-27 in 2000 — but it is, of course, a shift to parity, not to dominance.
The political realignment that Republicans wish for is real, but it has already happened.
[…]
…the electorate’s center did move, but only about 3 percentage points. That was about how much Bush improved his showing over 2000 in the average state he won twice, and it is also about the size of his margin of victory this year. It was enough to win him a close election, but hardly a breakthrough.
If anything structurally important happened in 2004, it was that the country moved to the right a little, but the Republican Party moved to the right a lot. John Kerry’s Democrats aimed for the center and nearly got there, whereas Bush pulled right. He won, of course, but in doing so he painted his party a brighter shade of red — especially on Capitol Hill, and above all in the Senate, some of whose new Republican members seem nothing short of extreme.
Read it all. I’ve written some of this same myself, so I’m partial, but really all is not lost. With all they had to work with to come down to a few votes in Ohio, gerrymandering Texas and picking off Red State Senate seats doesn’t exactly speak to great electoral strength.
Via Donkey Rising