Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Who’s Your Daddy?

Nicolas Kristof’s column is exactly right.

As moderates from the heartland, like Tom Daschle, are picked off by the Republicans, the party’s image risks being defined even more by bicoastal, tree-hugging, gun-banning, French-speaking, Bordeaux-sipping, Times-toting liberals, whose solution is to veer left and galvanize the base. But firing up the base means turning off swing voters. Gov. Mike Johanns, a Nebraska Republican, told me that each time Michael Moore spoke up for John Kerry, Mr. Kerry’s support in Nebraska took a dive.

Mobilizing the base would mean nominating Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008 and losing yet again.

The last thing we want is the support of the base. They, after all, are the problem. We need Americans, my friends. Rock ribbed, Real Americans, not a bunch of latte swilling bicoastals (even the ones in San Antonio and Minneapolis.) Thankfully, I hear they are all moving to Canada or France where they belong.

He says that we need to support faith based programs, tell blacks in the south that the confederate flag is their problem, forget guns (I thought we had) and help George W. Bush advance his agenda as much as possible.

He’s right, but it’s not enough. After all, we’ve already capitulated entirely on the death penalty, welfare and gun control issues and we put thousands of cops on the street, balanced the budget and told both blacks and gays in the military to zip their lips since ’92, but those were obviously not adequate to prove that we are Real Americans. (How could we have thought that killing one retarded black man or a whole passle of Vietnamese would compete with George W. Bush’s 158 confirmed kills?) There is much more “compromising” to do before anyone will believe that we mean it.

Some Democrats are way behind the curve by inching to the conclusion that ditching Roe vs. Wade is the way to go. That’s a big duh. Of course we will. And everyone agrees that it’s ixnay on the gay arriagemay. We won’t be making that mistake again.

Public money for religious education is obviously on the agenda and we can easily embrace it with everything we’ve got. I don’t think that endorsing faith based programs is enough. All secular social programs should immediately be outsourced to Charles Colson and Jerry Falwell with Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton’s blessing. But, even with all that I just have a sneaking suspicion that it might not be enough to persuade Real Americans to let us back into the country in 2008. It’s going to take something much bolder than that — and rightly so because they did, after all, win 51% of the vote.

Therefore, I propose that after we outlaw abortion, turn over huge amounts of public money to evangelical churches and enshrine discrimination against gays into the US Constitution, we fully and publicly endorse creationism. This is an issue that hasn’t worked its way up to the forefront of a national election yet and we could actually outflank the Republicans if we get on the bandwagon right now. This could be our issue in 2008.

First though, we have to put a muzzle on people who write things likethis. Michael Kinsley strikes exactly the right apologetic tone, but still fails to realize that the very point of his article is exactly the kind of liberal elitism that is oppressing the heartland:

So yes, OK, fine. I’m a terrible person — barely a person at all, really, and certainly not a real American — because I voted for the losing candidate on Tuesday. If you insist — and you do — I will rethink my fundamental beliefs from scratch because they are shared by only 47% of the electorate.

And please let me, or any other liberal, know if there is anything else we can do to abase ourselves. Abandon our core values? Pander to yours? Not a problem. Happy to do it. Anything, anything at all, to stop this shower of helpful advice.

There’s just one little request I have. If it’s not too much trouble, of course. Call me profoundly misguided if you want. Call me immoral if you must. But could you please stop calling me arrogant and elitist?

I mean, look at it this way. (If you don’t mind, that is.) It’s true that people on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose and where gay relationships have civil equality with straight ones. And you want to live in a society where the opposite is true. These are some of those conflicting values everyone is talking about. But at least my values — as deplorable as I’m sure they are — don’t involve any direct imposition on you. We don’t want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same sex, whereas you do want to close out those possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant?

We on my side of the great divide don’t, for the most part, believe that our values are direct orders from God. We don’t claim that they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist. Which philosophy is more elitist? Which is more contemptuous of people who disagree?

As many conservative voices have noted, American society suffers from a cult of grievance. To put it crudely, everyone wants some of the things blacks got from the civil rights movement: sympathy, publicity, occasional preferential treatment and a general ability to put everybody else on the defensive. No doubt liberals are responsible for this deplorable situation, and I apologize. Again. As a softheaded liberal, I even like the idea that our competitive culture has a built-in consolation prize.

But be fair! (A liberal whine, I know. Sorry.) Conservatives shouldn’t assert the prerogatives of victory and then claim the compensations of defeat as well. You can’t oppress us and simultaneously complain that we are oppressing you.

Well, of course you can do this, if you want. Who’s to stop you? I just kinda wish you wouldn’t. If you don’t mind my asking. Thanks. Sorry.

Sorry. There is no reason for Real Americans to listen to this until we have proved to them and to the wholesome heartland media voices of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh that we are worthy of making such a request.

Getting out in front on the creationism issue is the perfect way to make these people see that we understand them. And jettisoning our outmoded fealty to reason and science will have the salutory effect of freeing us from all sorts of other inconvenient moral issues like tolerance, fairness and equality. This is how we will convince Real Americans that we are the kind of principled people they can respect.

Update: I see that the “New”James Wolcott agrees with me.

Wolcott says:

Democrats could campaign to rescind the Martin Luther King holiday, but I fear this would backfire, since everyone likes an excuse to take a day off from work and would resent having to drag themselves that particularly Monday.

No, something ballsier is needed for a turnaround in perception. A taboo or two needs to be smashed.

Therefore I am proposing that the official Democratic slogan for 2008 be “Shoot a Fag for Jesus.”

It’s a simple, catchy slogan that will look good on a bumperstickers, yet carry a multilateral strike: pro-guns, anti-gay, and unashamedly Christian.

Since abortion is so problematic for Democrats, “Shoot a Babykiller for Jesus” might do the trick in some of the battleground states as a supplemental bumpersticker.

Obviously this is all still in the brainstorming stage, and will need to be focus-grouped, but I believe it nudges us further along the path to success gently lit by Kristof’s lamp of wisdom.

I like it. With a pro-creationism candidate, I think we might just pull it off. Maybe. If not, there’s always mandatory church attendance and rolling back the right to vote for women and blacks. We’ve got plenty of cards left to play. We’ll get there.

Wait A Minute

This is interesting and if it’s true then we are all barking up the wrong tree with this discussion of “values.” The Gay Marriage Myth – Terrorism, not values, drove Bush’s re-election.

Much has been made of the fact that “moral values” topped the list of voters’ concerns, mentioned by more than a fifth (22 percent) of all exit-poll respondents as the “most important issue” of the election. It’s true that by four percentage points, people in states where gay marriage was on the ballot were more likely than people elsewhere to mention moral issues as a top priority (25.0 vs. 20.9 percent). But again, the causality is unclear. Did people in these states mention moral issues because gay marriage was on the ballot? Or was it on the ballot in places where people were already more likely to be concerned about morality?

More to the point, the morality gap didn’t decide the election. Voters who cited moral issues as most important did give their votes overwhelmingly to Bush (80 percent to 18 percent), and states where voters saw moral issues as important were more likely to be red ones. But these differences were no greater in 2004 than in 2000. If you’re trying to explain why the president’s vote share in 2004 is bigger than his vote share in 2000, values don’t help.

If the morality gap doesn’t explain Bush’s re-election, what does? A good part of the answer lies in the terrorism gap. Nationally, 49 percent of voters said they trusted Bush but not Kerry to handle terrorism; only 31 percent trusted Kerry but not Bush. This 18-point gap is particularly significant in that terrorism is strongly tied to vote choice: 99 percent of those who trusted only Kerry on the issue voted for him, and 97 percent of those who trusted only Bush voted for him. Terrorism was cited by 19 percent of voters as the most important issue, and these citizens gave their votes to the president by an even larger margin than morality voters: 86 percent for Bush, 14 percent for Kerry.

These differences hold up at the state level even when each state’s past Bush vote is taken into account. When you control for that variable, a 10-point increase in the percentage of voters citing terrorism as the most important problem translates into a 3-point Bush gain. A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect. Nor does putting an anti-gay-marriage measure on the ballot. So, if you want to understand why Bush was re-elected, stop obsessing about the morality gap and start looking at the terrorism gap.

I had always had my suspicions that the real problem for us was the terrorism issue. Kerry’s anti-war past and the mere fact that he was a Democrat fit into an image of weakness that is almost impossible to break. That’s why he rightly emphasized his war hero status and why Rove called in the swift boat liars to tear it down. What they wanted to do was get that image of Kerry the hero out of people’s minds and the image of Kerry the effete liberal planted firmly in its place.

Kerry did a better job of overcoming that obstacle, and the more intractable obstacle of being a Democrat during a national security crisis, than anyone had a right to expect. He almost pulled it off. If he had he would have been able to banish the image of the Democratic weakling as effectively as Clinton banished the fiscal irresponsibility label. Too bad.

On the other hand, as Tom Schaller points out in this post on Daily Kos, there is a silver lining:

[Ralph]Reed, you see, wanted to not merely deliver the social conservatives’ “values” votes this year, but to ensure that their pivotal role be made noted and respected — broadcast and trumpeted, loudly and quite publicly. They didn’t want to just win; they want credit and plaudits for scoring the decisive touchdown.

Awesome. The fact that this election – the first post-9/11 election, with a war in Iraq abroad and a changing economic situation at home – will be remembered by the we-need-it-simplified media as the “values” election, is Reed’s great gift to us.

Why? Because I suspect that right now that the Wall Street wing, and the small business wing, and the defense industry wing, and the tax reform wings of the party are shuddering at the thought that Americans are being told that Bush got to 51 percent based on “values” voting. Would not the better “take-away” storyline from this election be that Bush won because the nation believes in Republicans’ fiscal and defense policies, their steadfastness and leadership abilities? I’m meeting a lot Republicans (both conservatives and moderates) who do not want this election to be framed as the Ralph Reed Rout.

[…]

And thus, the biggest silver lining of this election is how the GOP’s victory is thus far being claimed, framed and explained. To that I say, “Let us join that chorus.” And we should do so now, because there is immediacy in the post-election window of opportunity.

I think this may be right. We should spread it far and wide that this election was won by fringe fundamentalist first time voters who now feel empowered to force their views on everyone else, including mainstream Christians. It looks like Bush owes this small bloc of religious extremists big time. Gay marriage is just the beginning. Abortion, birth control, women’s rights the whole enchilada is now up for grabs.

That has to freak out the money and military types who are the real backbone of the party. After all, Bush didn’t run on “values,” he ran on being Commander Codpiece. This thing could be a boogeyman around their neck.

Divide and conquer. It’s tried and true.

Goalposts

Kevin Drum thinks that if Democrats dial back the liberal hectoring, we will get more votes from Middle Americans who aren’t extremists but who feel that we are too extreme:

They’re the ones who are uncomfortable with homosexuality, but understand that a steadily increasing acceptance of gay rights is probably inevitable. They don’t want to ban abortion, but feel like it’s common sense to require parental notification. And they’re ready to agree that we need to do something about global warming, but that doesn’t mean they take kindly to thinly veiled accusations that they’re personally responsible for it just because they drive an SUV or eat a Big Mac.

I can’t help but point out that the president just ran an entire campaign portraying Massachusetts as being some kind of foreign country so perhaps this cultural discomfort might be laid at the feet of the Republicans as much as the Democrats. I’m not exactly feeling the love from people who insist that Democrats aren’t Americans or that we are all traitors or that we are now “neutered” by this election and should be a lot more docile, like farm animals. That stuff isn’t coming from religious extremists, it’s coming from the mainstream leadership of the Republican party.

I’m not sure who these hectoring liberals are who get under the heartland’s skin with accusations about Big Macs, but I don’t think it was John Kerry. John Kerry didn’t run on disallowing parental notification laws or gay marriage. In fact, he specifically endorsed the former and ruled out the latter. He jettisoned gun control from the debate altogether. He went to church, talked about faith, and from all acounts he really is a sincere Catholic. The party had long since abandoned prison rehabilitation, the death penalty and welfare. Partial birth abortion has been outlawed. I’m not sure where we can go with this global warming issue if people aren’t willing to hear that driving an SUV is contributing to the problem unless we can talk about international agreements, which seems to be out also. Maybe the Dems should just let that one go too.

Be that as it may, the Republicans just won 51% and they say it’s because they don’t like our values, so we have no choice but to recognise that and talk about it. It’s not the first time. This is what the DLC acknowledged back in the 1980’s and changing position on the death penalty and welfare is what helped get Clinton elected (with a big assist from Ross Perot and a painful recession.)

Unfortunately, Clinton never got 50% in either election. And once in office he was tortured endlessly by the GOP, and lost the congress long before Monica bared her thong. He was an effective president anyway and I don’t quarrel with his legacy. His political skills, however, didn’t have as much to do with his ability to attract a majority, which he never did, but rather his ability to survive a constant political assault once in office.

This values debate has shown itself to be extremely useful to the GOP for decades and they are very adept at moving the goalposts when it’s necessary. (Remember, they were the ones who kept saying “you can’t legislate morality” during the civil rights era.) No matter how much we move to the right or adapt our positions on things like parental notification and gay marriage and the rest, there will always be another wedge issue there to exploit and convince the heartland that we liberals are trying to shove our immorality into their lives against their will. And that’s because it isn’t about values at all. It’s about politics. The Republicans have identified themselves as the party of the heartland tribe very effectively by pitting themselves against the enemy tribe —the Democratic liberal elite, as they define it. And they have a very effective machine that spreads that word.

Last time Gore allegedly lost because he was in the pocket of the liberal elites in the cities who want to ban guns. This time Kerry spent half the campaign toting a shotgun and allegedly lost because the liberal elite wants to legalize gay marriage. In years gone by it was gays in the millitary or welfare queens or draft dodgers or bra burners or whatever. It’s always something. Always.

The reason the heartland rejected John Kerry has absolutely nothing to do with what he actually believed or said. He could have adopted George W. Bush’s platform in its entirety and he would have been portrayed and believed to be some kind of an alien being descending upon the heartland like an invader from an enemy land. This has been one of the great successes of a 30 year political realignment that is settling into what can only be seen as a cold civil war. We won’t resolve it by continually trying to adjust piecemeal on values issues. We aren’t winning by doing that any more than we were winning by running on social issues or the nuclear freeze in the 1980’s.

That has been tried. We need a new, more modern approach altogether.

I might suggest that one of the things we begin to do is expose the hypocrisies of the Republican party. These decent, reasonable heartlanders might not be able to see liberals as being decent and reasonable but perhaps they could have their eyes opened by the cosmopolitan decadence of their own political leaders. Sometimes people have to be shaken out of their secure assumptions about their own tribe before they can see the merits of another.

Instead of running lukewarm values campaigns within their frame of social conservatism, perhaps we could run competing values campaigns on all-American libertarian beliefs like “mind your own business” and aim it at government, corporations and religious fanatics alike. Maybe we could shake free some of those western states from their coalition. Talk up the environment as stewardship of the land for hunting and fishing as well as conservation for the future.

But, frankly I believe that the problem will be solved through something much different. The world has changed even if the political bludgeon of values hasn’t. I really think politics has morphed into a post modern epistomological relativism that can only be dealt with through sensation and spectacle, not reason — the subject of many future posts, I imagine.

Update: Here’s an interesting article from the Texas Observer about Lakoff and Luntz that touches on what I wrote in the last paragraph:

As long as liberals and progressives insist that having the facts on their side is all that matters, they are doomed to impotence. The next move for the left in the frame war is to accept that it’s okay to cherry-pick reality as long as it conforms to a frame that’s morally acceptable. According to Lakoff, we already do it every day.

Guest Post

Blog commenter Thumb has decided to make the switch to the Republican Party and he’d like to share with you his reasons. I find them very convincing and I will be joining him. My life’s about to become a whole lot easier:

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

So the people voting for Bush told exit pollers that moral values are their #1 issue.

Because the Republicans are obviously superior in both numbers and cause, and their values oriented agenda should no doubt be a boon to human kind, there’s obviously only one thing left to do at this point. Convert. Therefor, in an act of supreme solidarity to our new national conservative alliance and their emphasis on values, I would just like to say, they’re right. I’m ready to sign up.

But first I need to declare that I too no longer care about losing millions of American jobs. I too no longer care about health care. Or social security. I also no longer care about education. I no longer care what happens to the poor, the elderly or the millions of American children growing up in poverty, despair and hopelessness. I no longer care that the US ranks a lowly 41st in infant mortality. I no longer care that the gap between rich and poor is approaching third world levels. I no longer care that Fortune 500 corporations can avoid paying taxes by opening an offshore mailbox and I no longer care that the working class will be forced pick up the difference. I no longer care that we’ve taken a record fiscal surplus and in three years turned it into the largest debt in the history of our country or that it will be our children, and their children, that will have to pay it back. I also no longer care how many Americans die at the hands of terrorists (as long as they’re dying over there and not here at home) or how many thousands of foreign civilians die in the course of our projecting American global hegemony. I no longer care what the rest of the world thinks of America, as long as they know to fear us. I no longer care about the science of potential medical breakthroughs nor do I care about slowing the spread of AIDS nor whether we have sufficient supplies of safe vaccines. I no longer care that the number of abortions is on the rise (though I’ll pound my chest and pretend that I do) because I no longer care about birth control, sex education or family planning. I no longer care about our environment and whether we’re allowing industries to poison our water, our air and ultimately our food supply, and I no longer care about the consequences of releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and its likelihood of accelerating global warming. I no longer care that our Bill of Rights, once enshrined to protect our personal freedoms and liberty, is being stripped down or that our 200 year old Constitutional protections are being traded for a false sense of security.

So what do I share with our new majority as my #1 concern? Values. I care about moral values.

Now that I’ve completed the switch to the other side moral values is all that matters to me. Moral values. Yes sir, I care enough that sufficient numbers of people share these moral values to make sure that we elect politicians that will put these moral values into law (even if it takes rigging the new electronic voting machines) and that those politicians in turn appoint judges guaranteed to ensure that everyone else is forced to live by these same moral values. Now some of you remaining Unbelievers may ask, “But if everything you no longer care about isn’t a moral value, what are your moral values?” Easy. The single most important moral value, overriding all other concerns, is that two people of the same sex are blocked from achieving secular legal recognitions that could in any way be similar to that enjoyed by heterosexual couples. Health and survivor benefits? Forget it. Employment protection? Come on. Inheritance rights? No way. Hospital visitation? Get real. Adoption? GOD FORBID!

You few, final remaining Democrats, moderates, greens and libertarians really need to get onboard the bandwagon. This new stripped down moral value is so easy I don’t know why I didn’t think of this myself earlier. Effortless morality. That’s the ticket. It’s like a gift from God. Now let’s jam it down everyone’s throat.

And God bless the New American Morality.

Schmucks

Matt Yglesias hits the nail on the head:

“I’ve got some serious disagreements with Thomas Frank’s take on this whole phenomenon, but he’s very right to argue in his book and elsewhere that the politics of cultural populism depends crucially on the Republicans never delivering the goods on any of the really big issues. Meanwhile, social conservatives have gotten treated this way for years — decades, really — and while they always complain about it, they always show up when it’s time to vote. I would suggest that insofar as liberals sometimes condescend to these people (which we do) the issue is less a condescending attitude toward religion, than a condescending attitude toward a voting bloc that doesn’t seem capable of figuring out that it’s being scammed no matter how many times it happens”

I’m fine with people’s religion as long as they don’t force me to practice it. Live and let live, I say. I like freedom and that includes freedom of religion. My problem with these people is that they are fools to continually be taken in by a group of rich plutocrats who’ve been running things for quite some time now and who have never substantially delivered anything they’ve promised to the social conservatives. They put on a good show, with lots of razzle dazzle, but they are not sincere. The social conservatives are like greyhounds chasing the mechanical rabbit. And the big money boyz are laughing all the way to the bank. Take pornography, for instance:

What companies are involved? Spencer’s investigators and reports from market research firms indicate that pornography is a $10 billion industry in the US alone, according to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The largest company is not even known for pornography, but for selling cars. General Motors Corp.’s DirecTV subsidiary sells nearly $200 million a year of pay-per-view sex films, according to industry estimates not disputed by GM.

Other companies involved, including EchoStar Communications, the No.2 satellite provider, AT&T Corp., by offering the HotNetwork service through its cable service, Liberty Media, Marriott International, the Hilton, On Command, LodgeNet Entertainment and News Corp., all have major stakes in pornography, but these stakes are not mentioned in annual reports, except in the vaguest ways. An AT&T executive explains, “How can we? It’s the crazy aunt in the attic. Everyone knows she’s there, but you can’t say anything about it.”

Do the social conservatives know that George W. Bush himself served on the board of a Hollywood production company, run by his best friend Roland Betts? They weren’t making Bambi, they were making movies like The Hitcher, which featured a woman being ripped in two. He made quite a nice little profit from that work (1983 to 1994.) Yet he forgot to mention his connection to the decadent world of Hollywood when he said:

“There needs to be a kind of sense of urgency in our society about the pervasiveness of violence”

It’s hard to respect people who are willing dupes year after year and deliver power to a party that is merely using them for electoral gains and has absolutely no intention of delivering on its promises. There’s just too much money involved in selling the culture that these people find so objectionable. And the ones who are selling it own the Republican party lock stock and falafel.

Like I said. Schmucks.

The New Untermenschen

I’m really enjoying this dialog over at Slate called “Why America Hates Democrats.”

The question answers itself, though, doesn’t it? Democrats obviously aren’t Americans. We are enemies of the state.

You won, Rush, Ann, Sean, Grover, Karl. Congratulations. Democrats are now officially expelled from the body politic. And with a bare 51% majority, too. Wow. That’s a hell of an achievement. Even the liberal Slate agrees with you now. (I’ll be looking forward to the articles that endorse teaching creationism in the schools because it’s a “value” that Americans hold dear .)

The good news is that Rush always said he wanted to keep one of us alive and put us in a museum someplace so that Americans would never forget what we looked like. Maybe we could have an election among ourselves and nominate the best representation of the hated Democrat. I’m pretty sure that they aren’t going to accept 99.9 % of us. In fact, the only one they are likely to accept would be someone who looks like Michael Jackson. Otherwise the person might just be mistaken for a relative or a neighbor and then everyone would get confused.

The question as to why we are hated by Americans is an interesting one that cannot be answered by a bunch of liberals trying to distance themselves from this hated subgroup. if you want the real answer, you’ll ask an real American why he hates democrats. Luckily, right in the LA Times it’s not hard to find the answer:

Christians, in politics as in evangelism, are not against people or the world. But we are against false ideas that hold good people captive. On Tuesday, this nation rejected liberalism, primarily because liberalism has been taken captive by the left. Since 1968, the left has taken millions captive, and we must help those Democrats who truly want to be free to actually break free of this evil ideology.

In the weeks and months to come, we will hear the voices of well-meaning people beseeching the victor to compromise with the vanquished. This would be a mistake. Conservatives must not compromise with the left. Good people holding false ideas are won over only if we defeat what is false with the truth.

The left must be defeated in the realm of ideas, just as it was on Tuesday at the ballot box. The left hates the ballot box and loves its courtrooms, which is why it hopes to continue to advance its agenda through the courts. This must end.

The left bewitches with its potions and elixirs, served daily in its strongholds of academe, Hollywood and old media. It vomits upon the morals, values and traditions we hold sacred: God, family and country. As we learned Tuesday, it is clear the left holds the majority of Americans, the majority of us, in contempt.

Simply, a majority of Americans have rejected John Kerry and John Edwards and the left because they are wrong. They are wrong because there are not two Americas. We are one nation under a God they reject. We remain indivisible despite their attempts to divide Americans through their relentless warfare against class, ethnic and religious unity.

We still believe that liberty and justice is for all. In 1946, there were those on the left who believed the Germans and the Japanese were incapable of democracy and liberty. Today, many doubt democracy can be birthed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Like their forebears, they too will be proved wrong.

The nation has now resoundingly rejected the left and its agenda. We do not want to become European. We do not want to become socialist. We do not want to become secular. We are exceptional. We are unique. And we are the greatest force for good in the world, despite what the left, the terrorists or the United Nations may claim. It is for these reasons that we remain the last great hope in the world for freedom.

We continue to be that shining city set on a hill. And we fully accept the responsibility; we are proud to be the envy of the world.

Die Liberale sind unserer Unglück

Electoral Arithmetic For Dummies

Kevin Drum is sick of this exceedingly STUPID mantra about how the Democrats face terrible arithmetic in the electoral college because of our inability to carry the south. He says:

No kidding. But try this on for size instead:

“Republicans face this terrible arithmetic in the Electoral College where if they don’t carry any of the 13 Northeastern states they need to win two-thirds of everything else,” says Kevin Drum, an expert on simplistic arithmetic at the Washington Monthly.

Note to the media: it was a close election, just like it was four years ago. There were only a dozen swing states, and Republicans had no more chance of winning in California, New York, and Illinois than Democrats did in Georgia, Alabama, and Wyoming. A trivial swing of a hundred thousand votes in half a dozen states and you’d be writing pretentious thumbsuckers about how cultural issues were losing their ability to attract votes for Republicans. So knock it off, OK?

I agree. I think that this arithmetic epitaph is perhaps the most annoying post election spin of all. You can argue about whether “moral values” as a top reason for voting this election means that the country is awash in religious fervor, but you simply cannot spin these numbers as a huge sea change. This was a squeaker only marginally more comfortable for Bush than 2000, not a blow out. Somebody has to win and the GOP machine has pulled it out the last two elections, but it could very easily have gone the other way. Red is redder and blue is bluer, that’s all.

Media Meltdown

I’m starting to get a little bit punchy from lack of sleep these last few days so I don’t have the energy tonight to write anything about this very interesting PressThink post by Jay Rosen about where the press is headed after this election.

I urge you all to read it. This may be where the real action is these next couple of years. It’s likely to be as fundamental to our future as the carnage that Bush is going to wreak.

Ashcroft Likely to Leave AG Post

I heard some woman on ABC saying that this is not what it seems. According to her, the president never wanted Ashcroft but he was forced on him by the religious right. This rumor is being pushed by those in the bush administration who want him out right away before some shit hits the fan (Plame? Kenny Boy?)

Whatever. It occurred to me that if we had a good message machine we would immediately seize upon this to sow divisions between Bush and his newly empowered evangelical base. They love Johnny. Isn’t it a slap in the face that their beloved Bush is pushing him out of office the day after the election?

Divide and conquer, baby. It’s just one of many hardball tactics we must begin to use to break the stranglehold in advance of the 2006 elections. It could be our ’94.

Who Are We?

I noticed that there seems to be a lot of discussion around the left blogosphere about the Democratic party not knowing what it stands for. This has been picked up by Howard Fineman who is busy telling everyone who’ll listen that we stand for nothing. I’m a little bit stunned by this and so is The Poor Man.

Obviously, I have no objection to people coming up with new ideas, but I hardly think this is really a problem of the Democratic Party. It is absolutely clear what the Democrats stood for in this election – a generally conservative set of principles based on sixty-plus years of Democratic and bipartisan American thought and action. Respect for the importance of time-tested international alliances, and for the system for resolving global issues through the UN and other international bodies which has evolved over the last century. A measured approach to dealing with foreign relations, a recognition that there are always many crises to be juggled at once, and a disinclination to overextend or rely on ‘magic bullet’ or utopian solutions. Striking a balance between business and labor which benefits both, and judicious use of the state to resolve problems for which the private sector is poorly suited. Fiscal responsibility. A tolerence of difference, a respect for ability and expertise, and a dedication to the ideals of the woman’s rights, civil rights, and labor movements. An America like the America we grew up in and believed in, only maybe a bit better, which stands for and gains its strengths from these common values which are our heritage.

There you go. In a piece from the primaries some months back, I wrote that any Democrat would run basically on the following platform:

To protect and defend the citizens of the United States.

To preserve the separation of church and state

To safeguard the right to choose.

To provide a decent safety net

To preserve progressive taxation

To protect the environment

To advance civil liberties and civil rights

To govern transparently

To provide opportunity

To promote equality

To advance progress

To preserve the American way of life

I don’t think there is all that much question about what we stand for. However, as The Poor Man points out, that has almost nothing to do with how we are perceived by millions of Americans who tune in the Mighty Wurlitzer for their “news.” There has been a decades long attack on liberalism that has demonized us into a party of stoned slackers and caffeinated porno consumers. (More projection. They don’t call Delay “Hot Tub Tom” for nothing.) This character assasination made it possible for a president to be elected with a totally incoherent set of “values” that could only have been designed by someone cobbling together a governing coalition of deaf, dumb and blind people who cannot read.

They didn’t win the campaign because they have a coherent ideology and we didn’t. Rupert Murdock and Jerry Falwell are not pursuing the same goals. “Democracy” and Ilyiad Allawi do not belong in the same sentence. Radical tax cutting and running wars to the tune of a billion a day is not fiscal responsibility. Bigotry is not compassionate and destroying the safety net we’ve depended on for more than half a century is not conservative.

These people aren’t united by a common ideology or set of values. They are united by a common hatred of Democrats, fueled by a massive propaganda machine. They won this campaign by putting on a trash talking spectacle starring George W. Bush as Commander Codpiece. (Those who wanted to ban gay marriage got in two for the price of one.) The problem is that show biz conservatism has become the default channel for more Americans. It’s about identity, not ideology.