BroadSnark

So here is a fascinating chart from Pew. It shows trust in government by administration, starting with Kennedy and Johnson.

During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, most democrats and republicans trusted the government. After Tricky Dick, trust in government plunged and never really came back. But whereas trust in government (or lack thereof) stays fairly consistent for democrats and independents, for republicans it shoots up when one of their own is in the Whitehouse.  I mean look at the difference between George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  Holy crap.

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around these figures.  Republicans – who are always talking about small government and keeping the government out of your business and how evil politicians are – have absurdly high trust in government when its one of “their own.”  If they see themselves reflected back, then they just figure, what?  They’re good people and we should just trust them?  Evidence be damned.  But if it’s the scary other, then all bets are off and it’s time to march out with guns?

Meanwhile democrats, who don’t trust government worth a damn, insist that every problem can only be solved with legislation and government enforcement.  How’s that for schizophrenic?  Why on earth would you time and again willingly give your power to people you don’t trust to use it wisely?  And how is it that I, as an anarchist mistrustful of power, am often treated like I’m out of my mind.  I’m just taking your own mistrust to its logical conclusion.

The survey also asked whether it was the members of congress or the political system that was broken.  Unfortunately, they asked it in such a way that, if you wanted to say it was the system, you had to say that congress people have good intentions.  What kind of choice is that.  I’ll take D. none of the above.

You can see the whole pew poll here

Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen at Politico wrote a story about how Obama’s White House is “working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party.”

The Heritage Foundation quoted that story and then did a fascinating little maneuver where they tried to turn “the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party” into the “average Americans” that progressives have “contempt” for.

The argument goes like this.  Obama’s people are shutting out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street executives, and Fox News.  This shutout shows that Obama is targeting those organizations, just like Saul Alinsky advises people to target their enemy in his book Rules for Radicals.

Alinsky said that the middle class was “materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized, and corrupt.”  Ergo, Obama, who is using Alinsky’s tactics, has contempt for the middle class.  Since all Americans are, of course, middle class; Obama hates you and wants his elite friends to make all your decisions for you.

Let’s break that down a little.  Wall Street executives, whose bonuses are being paid with the tax money Obama gave them, are feeling shut out?  Even better – Wall Street, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are “average Americans?”

And, goodness me, aside from Saul Alinsky, no one on earth has ever attacked (by ignoring) another person – not ever.  So this must be an Alinsky thing, cause the world of politics was all civility and roses aside from that.

Oh, I could go on and on.

What should we take from this (aside from the fact that Heritage is full of shit)?

Republicans have done a very good job of painting Democrats as elitist.  That isn’t particularly difficult.  Democrats are elitist.  So are Republicans.  This whole town is elitist and everybody is working to get their elites as much as they can.

The good news is that many (most?) Americans, while still widely accepting of all the hierarchies that prop those elitists up, have a little voice in their head that responds negatively to the idea that ivy league Wall Street schmucks should get bonuses for screwing us or that you need alphabet soup at the end of your name in order to be capable of making a decision.

That’s why people respond to messaging like that.  And that’s a good thing. Or, at least, it could be if people besides The Heritage Foundation were tapping into it.

Here in the United States, we like to pretend that we are all middle class.  We all want to believe in that myth of equal opportunity.  Despite the fact that every day we see people with no scruples who work less and earn more, we still seem to buy into the idea that those who work hard will be rewarded for it.

This mythology, this willingness to admire the rich and revile the poor, is very convenient for the people that have been bleeding us dry.  And while we are busy blaming the poor for their misfortune, the richest 1% keep taking bigger slices of the pie.

Since Ronald Reagan, every president has run on a platform of fiscal responsibility.   And since Ronald Reagan, social programs spending (except for health care costs) has been decreasing.

The republicans managed to win elections by labeling poor, black women as “welfare queens.”  Their tactics were so successful that the democratic party fell all over itself to become “new democrats” who “reformed” the welfare system.

Now the welfare queen myth is back in new form.  Once again, that greedy 1% is manipulating people into thinking that their increasingly difficult and indebted lives are the result of poor freeloaders, rather than the rich corporate welfare recipients who really benefit from government largess.

The 1% is really ratcheting up their war now.  The war is no longer just against the poor or against liberal government.  They now set their sites on civil society.  This morning’s Heritage Foundation email attacks, not just acorn, but “poverty advocacy” as a whole

That “web of relationships” between poverty advocacy groups like ACORN is the real story here that impacts the American people. ACORN is by far not the only suspect community organizer group. Just last summer federal investigators raided a city-chartered nonprofit agency accused of abusing a federally financed program that was created to clean up houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Teachers unions have contributed over $1.3 million to ACORN and its affiliates, since 2005. And the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has chipped in another $7.4 million. ACORN founder Wade Rathke even has a book out titled “Citizen Wealth” which “shows how to cut through government indifference and bureaucratic obstacles” to achieve “maximum eligible participation” in the “anti-poverty programs still out there.”

So here we are.  The 1% is using their considerable arsenal to make sure they keep their lifestyles of the rich and famous.  Republican politicians and media pundits will happily help them blame the poor, brown people for all our troubles.  Democrats will, maybe, throw a little government money our way to look like they are for the people.

The real question is, what are we going do?  Are we going to let politicians attack the poor and those advocating on their behalf? Are we going to watch as democrats fall all over themselves, once again, trying to show how fiscally responsible and anti-welfare they are? Are we going to let race and culture and mistrust get in our way again?

Or are we finally going to acknowledge that the 1% has gone too far and it’s time the other 99% of us stand up for some justice?

You ever get the feeling you’ve been had?

I’ve been watching our health care “debate” and marveling at the lunacy of it all.  I got into an argument last week with a woman who insists that, despite everything he says and writes, Barack Obama is some sort of far left fanatic.  There are birthers and deathers and tenthers and now someone who thinks the government is trying to set up concentration camps.

Much like Rachel Maddow in this clip, I was taking some comfort in the fact that the side I most closely identified with seemed a lot less crazy.  But are democrats really debating policy as Maddow contends?  True, democratic congresspeople are not accusing their republican counterparts of having been born on Mars.  But most of the coverage I have seen has pitted democrats who say “we need to do something” against republicans who say “no.”  That isn’t a policy debate.

While the right has been busy playing on fears of black panthers, revolution, and reparations; the left has been playing on fears of racist militias and assassins.  The media, of course, just eats it up.  They don’t want to talk policy.  They want controversy.  They want to find the extreme and put that on camera.  So Van Jones is turned into a cop killing black panther and any conservative who doesn’t trust the democrats is turned into David Duke with rabies.

Meanwhile, as Matt Taibbi points out in his must read article:

they gave away single-payer before a single gavel had fallen, apparently as a bargaining chip to the very insurers mostly responsible for creating the crisis in the first place. Then they watered down the public option so as to make it almost meaningless, while simultaneously beefing up the individual mandate, which would force millions of people now uninsured to buy a product that is no longer certain to be either cheaper or more likely to prevent them from going bankrupt. The bill won’t make drugs cheaper, and it might make paperwork for doctors even more unwieldy and complex than it is now. In fact, the various reform measures suck so badly that PhRMA, the notorious mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry which last year spent more than $20 million lobbying against health care reform, is now gratefully spending more than seven times that much on a marketing campaign to help the president get what he wants.

In other words, many democrats have been quietly selling us out to big money yet again.  One can’t help but think that the birthers and deathers and tenthers aren’t such a bad thing for democrats.  The dems get to rally their base against the crazies without their base actually paying much attention to what is going to be in the bill they are rallying around.  On television we see the extremists, but how many Americans just don’t trust democrats to do the right thing and don’t support reform for that reason?  That’s not such a crazy position.

Our democracy cannot function if we don’t stop seeing each other as caricatures through the lenses of politicians and media personalities.  They keep raking in the money and favors.  We keep getting screwed by the same execs and stockholders.

There is an interesting comment stream on the Dissenting Justice blog this week.  Darren criticizes the disruptive behavior of the health care protesters in his post.  Many of the commenters called foul, claiming that liberals did not object when their side compared Bush to Hitler or disrupted meetings.

So the questions are

1. Did liberals do the same thing?
2. Did no one object?
3. Are liberals being hypocrites?
4. Why?

I think the answer to question one is yes.  Liberals certainly compared Bush to Hitler.  I doubt you would have to look too hard to find links calling Bush a fascist. As for Darth Chaney, we had to hit the fictional characters to describe the evil he represented. And Code Pink did disrupt congress with anti-war protests.

I disagree that nobody took them to task for it though.  Code Pink is derided on the mainstream left and right.  Check out this hilarious Daily Show clip.

Still, I think there is some hypocrisy here.  I laugh at Code Pink.  I’m not laughing at the health care protesters.  That is because of one simple fact.

I’m not scared of Code Pink.

The health care protesters, on the other hand, scare the shit out of me. I’ve never heard of anyone dying at the hands of a middle-aged, jewish mother in pepto-bismol pink.   (Although I sometimes think my jewish mother might be the death of me.)

Angry white men, on the other hand, are a whole different story.  When I see red-faced, white men spewing rage I think of lynch mobs and assassins.  I think of James Earl Ray and Timothy McVeigh and Scott Roeder.

You have guns.  We have pink feather boas.

I’m wrong though.  I’m not wrong about historical facts and I’m not wrong to be prudent when faced with angry people (especially if they might be armed).  But I am wrong to act out of fear.  When fear is a motivating factor, what you get is a bunch of scary people yelling at each other.  Fear cannot be the basis for democracy.

I’m also wrong to stereotype people I don’t know.  There are millions of people who think abortion is as wrong as Scott Roeder did, but they didn’t all go to abortion clinics and kill people.  Conservative guys don’t all go home at night and put on pointy, white hats.  Howard Zinn is an old white dude too.

There are people who genuinely believe that socialized medicine is a horrible idea, think it is coming, and don’t want to lie down and let it happen.  And I respect their right and willingness to stand up for what they believe, no matter how much I disagree with them.

It is possible, maybe even probable, that many of these people are connected to the Republican party or insurance companies or right wing lobby groups.  The fact is that all those people are also Americans.  They are Americans who, I believe, do not have the welfare of all of us in mind, but they are still Americans.

So here is my challenge to all sides.  Ask yourself what you are afraid of.  Ask yourself if you are acting out of fear.  Ask yourself if you can do better.

Whenever anyone talks about Florida, they always make it seem as though winning Florida hinges on the votes in South Florida. But Florida is a big state and who wins or loses depends on more than just a handful of Cubans and Jews in South Florida.

In fact, South Florida is in the bag. It always votes democratic, despite the heavily Republican Cuban vote. In the 2004 presidential election Miami-Dade County favored Kerry over Bush 409,732 to 361,095. Broward County, where Ft. Lauderdale sits, was even more democratic with 453,873 voting for Kerry and only 244,674 for Bush.

In the 2000 Presidential Election Gore received 39,275 more Miami-Dade County votes than Bush. And Gore received a whopping 209,801 more votes than Bush in Broward County. That’s about 69% of the vote. If it were up to Dade and Broward Counties, Florida would have gone democratic in both of the last presidential elections.

I would expect to see those democratic number rise even higher this election. George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency will certainly push the votes in that direction, but so will demographic and generational changes. Look for an increase in votes from the citizen children of non-citizen immigrants who arrived from the Caribbean (particularly Haiti) beginning in the 1950s. Their children can vote, and I’m guessing they will.

Further, the Republicans’ main voters in South Florida are an aging group of white Cubans. Their children may still be Republicans, but their ideological dedication isn’t nearly as strong. What’s more, later arrivals (many of whom are Afro-Cuban and have more ambivalent feelings about the Cuban government) may have a more open mind.

Regardless of how much Obama wins by in South Florida, it is northern Florida where the race will be won. It is northern Florida, which more closely resembles Georgia, that usually votes Republican in national elections. Duval County (Jacksonville) favored Bush in each of the last two elections. In 2000 it was 152,098 to 107,864 and in 2004 it was 220,190 to 158,610.

Duval County is about 30% African American, but only 60% of of African American voters in Duval showed up in 2004. A significant increase in black voting in Duval could turn the county democratic. If northern Florida counties turn democratic, and I believe some of them will, Barack Obama wins the state comfortably.

Another northern and Central Florida trend to keep an eyeball on is the influx of Puerto Ricans to the area. While the Puerto Rican community in the Orlando area has been growing for some time, it is only recently that they have been moving to places like Sarasota. Puerto Ricans tend to vote democratic.

McCain’s campaign seems to have assumed that they would continue to pull in the Central and Northern Florida counties that have traditionally gone Republican. Or maybe, as Adam Nagourney reports in the New York Times article While McCain Looked Away, Florida Shifted, they believed that “Mr. Obama, as an African-American, would have trouble winning support from two of the state’s key constituencies: Hispanics and Jews.”

If his report is true, it is delightful. Republicans have been trying to convince us that we hate each other and that we do not have common interests for so long that they actually started to believe their own hype. Once again, they counted on racism to help them win an election. But this time it is going to backfire in a huge way. Sweet.

Republicans have consistently and explicitly used racism as a political strategy. Sadly, their tactics have all too often worked. They are trying it again this election, but this time it seems to be failing. If it fails, especially if it fails big, does the Southern strategy finally die forever?

Racism in Republican Campaigns

In my lifetime, I have come to know the Republican Party as the party of white people; specifically, old, white, Protestant, men. The Republican Party has encouraged this perception and still managed to win quite a few elections.

When Nixon talked about “states rights” in the south, what he really meant was that the federal government shouldn’t make Southerners integrate. When Ronald Reagan began his run for the presidency talking about states rights in Mississippi, in the very county where three civil right activists were infamously murdered, he was sending a very strong message.

When George H.W. Bush used images of a black felon who committed horrible crimes (Willie Horton) in his race against Michael Dukakis, he conjured up images of the scary black man to win an election. And when George W. Bush’s campaign flyered the South insinuating that John McCain had an illegitimate black baby, Bush rode racism all the way to the Republican nomination.

Republicans Moment of Demographic Realization

Bill Clinton’s popularity and success depended in large part upon the votes of women, Latinos, African-Americans, and young people. It took Republicans a while to catch on, but some time during Bill Clinton’s presidency they realized that demographics were against them. In fact, in just thirty-four years, white people will no longer be the majority of the U.S. population.

In 2000, the Republican National Convention looked like Sunday in Harlem (literally, the 2000 convention featured a black gospel choir). Republicans started trying to appeal to black voters and to court Latino voters (particularly Christian conservative blacks and Latinos). Prominent Republicans were even apologizing for their use of the Southern strategy.

McCain’s New Southern Strategy

This time around, Republicans seem to have conceded the black vote and nearly conceded the Latino one. The possibility of the first African-American president is as exciting as the Bush administration’s response to Katrina was infuriating to black voters. Their support of Barack Obama is strong. Latinos are angry at the anti-immigration Republican vitriol that has often turned just plain anti-Latino, and especially anti-Mexican. The GOP is losing them as well.

This leaves John McCain with only one way of winning. He has to make sure he appeals to the most base conservatives of the Republican Party (no that’s not a typo) and bring them out in force. He must make sure every fearful, racist shows up at the polls to vote against the black guy with the funny name. He needs women to show up for the Republicans, as white men alone won’t get them a win. Republicans thought they covered their bases by choosing Sarah Palin as a running mate. She is certainly appealing to anti-abortion zealots, Christian conservatives, racists, and aging cold warriors. Just check out some fan videos.

The Southern Strategy Backlash

Of course in trying to appeal to the fringe elements of the Republican Party, the party was bound to lose some of the moderates. They are betting on the fact that there are enough fanatics and racists out there (men and women) to bring the election home for them. But the gamble doesn’t appear to be working.

Moderate Republicans and true conservatives are abandoning ship. Colin Powell just came out in support of Barack Obama, specifically citing the tone of his campaign and his choice of Sarah Palin. William F. Buckley’s son, conservative columnist and writer Christopher, also came out in support of Obama citing the same reasons. A friends father, who hasn’t voted for a Democrat since the seventies, is voting for Obama in large part because of the Palin choice.

In fact, it seems that the Southern strategy may be pushing the numbers in Obama’s favor in some battleground states like Florida and Virginia. Polls there have shown Obama’s numbers jump since McCain has gone increasingly negative, trying to paint Obama as an outsider, un-American, and suspicious.

The End of the Southern Strategy

I’ve spoken to a lot of people who worry about the ugliness of the campaign. They are afraid that appealing to racism will work yet again and wonder what happens then. A better question is, what if it doesn’t work? What if it fails so spectacularly that no Republican politician running for national office will ever believe that he can win using those tactics?

A rout this election will not only give democrats a win, it will give fiscal conservatives and Libertarian Republicans an opportunity to end the days of the Southern strategy. It will give them an opening to end the stranglehold social conservatives and neo-conservatives have on their party. Let’s hope they take it.