Sunday, November 07

World

A Slate Of Pundits

Those cheerful, chirpy boys and girls at Slate are still at it. (You can find my previous commentary on Slate's series of articles, Why Americans Hate Democrats, here.)

Katha Pollitt oscillates between lucidity and insanity in a manner that seems calculated to induce sea-sickness. At one moment, we have:

Sometimes I wonder if political commentators do much more than rationalize their own worldview.

Which is reasonably astute, though she fails to take the analysis down the obvious path. Then she starts speaking in tongues:

The scale of the suggestions is not adequate to the scale of the problem. It's tinkering around the edges. It's assuming that Christian-right voters don't really mean what they say. If a voter wants Christian Jihad, he may not be willing to desert the cause for health insurance—especially with Republicans telling him 50 times a day that the plan is really a socialist plot to raise his taxes and poison him with Canadian drugs.

From the remarkably perceptive:

My daughter, who is a high-school senior, told me months ago that Kerry would lose because people wouldn't unseat a wartime president. "What's that line about not changing horses in midstream?" She should probably have my slot in this forum.

To the frankly disturbing:

And if a crucial subtext of Republicanism is—and I believe it is—the preservation of white privilege, whole swathes of the country are a lost cause for the Democrats. The Democrats had the South—and the country—when they had the racist vote. Now, thanks to Nixon's Southern strategy, the Republicans have that very large and energetic demographic.

It's true enough that the Democrats did have the racist vote, forty years ago. But to claim that the Republicans have it now?

Steven Waldman is the first of the writers to actually offer some worthwhile advice. Although he starts off badly:

When thinking of values, faith, and how to win elections, it's useful to ask, What Would Clinton Do? Bill Clinton always combined economic liberalism with a handful of cultural issues designed to appeal to red-state voters: welfare reform, crime, and national service. He picked these issues carefully, knowing that they would show traditional Americans that he wasn't a morally permissive liberal who didn't understand right from wrong (tee-hee).

The old fake-sincerity approach - he does at least have this to say:

On some level, the hardest thing that Democratic leaders, activists, and journalists have to do is honestly ask themselves this: Do you hold very religious people in contempt? If you do, religious people will sense it—and will vote against you. And there are more of them than there are of you.

Which echoes one of my own points. If you hold the voters in contempt, you can expect the same from them.

Walter Dellinger doesn't say much of interest, really. He has little advice for his party, noting that

There have been 11 presidential elections since the dawn of the civil rights movement that have altered the shape of American politics. Five times the party's nominee has been from outside the South, and all five times the party has gone down to defeat ('68, '72, '84, '88, '04). Six times the Democratic nominee was from the South, and the Democrats won (or won the popular vote) in five of those six elections ('64, '76, '92, '96, '00).

Yes, he's trying to count Gore as a win.

To his credit, he does take Katha Pollitt to task for her remarks on the "racist vote".

Racism in Dixie is a problem, but no more today than in the rest of the country, and maybe less so. (Katha—come down to North Carolina sometime, and go with me to most any McDonald's in Durham. You are likely to see a lot more tables of whites and blacks from the office or the job site having lunch together than you will in Manhattan.)

Diane McWhorter's contribution is so bizarre it is difficult to summarize, though I can tell you that she's not going to make Mr Waldman happy. Try the opening paragraph:

Before the Democrats can cure their morality deficit disorder, they must first diagnose the insidiously effective strain of virtue advanced by the Republicans. "Morality" is the new "race"—as in racism. It is the emotional linchpin of the Republicans' latest "Southern strategy," pioneered in 1968 by Richard Nixon to lure the solid (Democratic) South from the party that had betrayed its Dixie base by ending segregation through the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

What can I say about this? Yes, Ms. McWhorter is saying that morality is equivalent to racism. And I'll note that although the Civil Rights Act was introduced by President Kennedy - a Democrat - its opponents were led by Senator Richard Russell - also a Democrat. She continues:

The props have changed since Nixon spoke to the smarting segregationists in the code of "states rights" and "law and order." Gun rights stood in for states rights as the animating spirit of the Gingrich Revolution of the 1990s (until the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was blasted into rubble by one of the gun lobby's constituents).

She not only equates racism with morality, but also with states' rights, gun rights, and the terrorist attack in Oklahoma City. All one and the same to Ms. McWhorter. She continues:

But even as the agenda has now shifted to the sanctity of marriage, the ends and means remain remarkably consistent: Seduce the have-nots into a strange bedfellow-ship with the haves through emotional tribal markers that strike at some pre-rational sense of identity. Then they will be persuaded to vote against their own self-interest.

In other words, those stupid yokels got suckered by those city slicker Republicans who appealed to their irrational beliefs in racism states' rights gun rights marriage. All the same thing, of course. One more sample:

That seems so obvious that Katha Pollitt and my fellow commentators invoke the Southern strategy as shorthand. But how does it work? Since I hail from a red state deep in the heart of Dixie—and claim many of "those people" as my friends and relatives—perhaps I can shed some light. Rather than isolating the "faith voters" as freaks and grotesques (as Southerners have historically been seen by the North), we should be analyzing what we all, as members of the human race, have in common.

By this point - and we're just on the second paragraph here! - I'm astonished that Ms. McWhorter is willing to concede that Southerners are members of her species and not some strange relative of the Indonesian hobbits.

Donna Brazile tells us that

Democrats can and must remain firmly rooted in the ideals of social justice.

As one of the alien mice in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Gude to the Galaxy remarked, Sounds good, but doesn't tie you down to actually meaning anything.

As one of my friends in Oregon reminded me in an early morning e-mail, this is not just about the Democratic Party. It's about the democratic rights of all Americans.

Well, it's nice to know that it's not just the Democrats who have democratic rights.

There follow several paragraphs of discussion on religion which I am reluctant to put an interpretation on. Living in Australia, one of the most secular countries in the world, I just don't have the personal experience to deal with this. But before long we find ourselves on firmer ground:

Today, as liberals, as Democrats, and as progressive voters, we must acknowledge with humility that what we stand for no longer resonates with a sizeable chunk of voting Americans.

This certainly appears to be true, and is a significant admission, but:

Democrats must speak in a language that allows all voters to know we share their outlook for a strong and prosperous country, we respect their values of tolerance, but our leaders are in public office to help make things better for us all—not worse.

So the real problem is not what the Democrats stand for, it's the resonance. If they could just speak their language people would understand that Democrats are Here to Help.

This is a new moment to identify and recruit better messengers. Perhaps it's time to tap into the "Obama" factor: Scour statehouses for young, energetic, inspiring, and emerging leaders with the ability to connect the head and heart.

Yes, it's Shoot the Messenger time. There can't be anything wrong with the Message, obviously.

In this coming season, Democrats must resist going back to using terms like affirmative action, pro choice, union, and "the movement" to describe what we're for. These words are limited and often open to negative interpretation from the right.

Translation: They reveal the fact that many of us are still holding a candle for Karl Marx and class warfare, and we can't have that.

But once we agree on a shared vision to connect our progressive social values of faith, family, hard work, loyalty, opportunity, security, and prosperity for all, we will soar again.

Yes, let me know when you work that one out. One last paragraph that I can't resist:

Democrats will build on the successes of this year. More grass-roots organizers were recruited and trained than ever before. Over $300 million was raised in one year—the most ever by the Democratic Party. We started this electoral season more unified and energized than ever before; we must continue to soar.

Continue to soar? Donna, you lost.

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