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The Real Problem
As these fancy maps show, while the 2004 election loss was deeply saddening, the Democratic Party is hardly the hopelessly competitive entity many liberals seem to fear. The real problem facing the country -- liberal and conservative alike -- is not a political one, but a policy one. If you take the case against Bush seriously (and I do) then the consequences of four more years of Republican control are likely to be dire. Not especially in the "values" realm, but in the economic and foreign policy realms. I suspect that many people will die, that there's a non-trivial chance of a financial collapse, and that if a financial collapse is avoided it will be through pairing down the government's discretionary functions to unsustainable levels. If the next four years really do have awful consequences, then the Republicans will almost certainly be booted from power. If they don't (no more terrorist attacks, no more wars, no dire economic distress) then the Democrats will have a problem, but it's the sort of problem I would welcome. The thing to worry about is that the Democrats will be presented with a situation where it's quite easy to get into office, but whose human consequences are horrifying.
The Great Depression was the best thing to ever happen to progressive politics in America, but it was not something to be welcomed, nor something to wish for again. But if you want to see a political party that was in very bad shape, check out the election results from the 1920s (also an illustration, by the way, that getting shut out of the South isn't necessarily an impediment to landslide wins). That was a bad time for Democrats. By 1932 the problem magically went away, but it wasn't a Good Thing that happened in 1929.
November 7, 2004 | Permalink
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Comments
Wow, Al Smith couldn't even carry his home state of New York.
But yeah, the left needs to get rid of the right's idiotic "they just want stuff to get bad" argument. There are several ways to do this: show the difference between hope and expect, ask why you'd continue with terrible policies if you are interested in making things better, etc.
The other important thing to remember with the great depression was the effect of the corporate Lochner court, and the great damage being done in the name of crass capitalism. It's a real shame that things have to get real bad before people want to make them better, but I guess there are worse things to be cursed with than foresight.
Lastly, Nader doesn't hold a candle to Thomas.
Posted by: dstein | Nov 7, 2004 4:20:55 AM
The most disturbing statistic, to me, is the fact that some 60% of republicans still believe that hussein had WMDs. That's not ordinary cluelessness, it's more like religious conviction. This jibes perfectly with my own personal experiences talking to republicans: they've really dug in their heels, psychically speaking.
If "republicanism" is now a form of religious faith, then it's going to take something cataclysmic like what you speak of to break it.
Posted by: Josh Yelon | Nov 7, 2004 4:30:47 AM
Josh, cluelessness is a fairly pervasive trait throughout the electorate. I haven't seen any real statistics to support the conclusion that Republicans are significantly more clueless than Democrats, although I am open to being proven wrong.
Posted by: Glenn Bridgman | Nov 7, 2004 5:12:11 AM
Yes, well, we'd all be a lot better off if Bush's "Iraq first, ask questions later" policy were to actually work. If the reified cartoon-like abstractions that the Right seems to think of the world in terms of was actually veridical then we'd probably be a lot further along in fighting it. Instead, the only thing more amorphous than the enemy is the strategy to get them.
"The most disturbing statistic, to me, is the fact that some 60% of republicans still believe that hussein had WMDs. That's not ordinary cluelessness, it's more like religious conviction."
Viewers of Fox News were likely to have the same beliefs higher than viewers of any other news source, and believed it at about the same rate as these Bush voters. See if you can see the connection.
It's nothing like religious faith, they just exposed themselves to the right propaganda sources and were just too fucking stupid to think critically about them. Faith is at least honorable, honest and straightforward. It's not like they all got together and said, "I choose to believe this as a matter of faith" it's just that they were exposed to it like any other marketing campaign and they were just too idiotic to think their way of. I'm sick and tired of being ruled by morons and the people they vote for, especially when my life is at stake. I don't want to share a country with them any longer.
Posted by: Travelyan | Nov 7, 2004 5:13:17 AM
Glenn - I'm not referring to normal cluelessness. Normal cluelessness is simply not knowing something, because nobody ever told you or maybe you weren't paying attention.
But this isn't normal cluelessness. The 60% I quoted above is incorrect. The actual number is 72% of Bush supporters and 26% of Kerry supporters believe Hussein had WMDs. One possible explanation for the difference is that Bush supporters watch the news less. But we both know that's not it. It's clear that Bush supporters are *extraordinarily resistant* to that particular piece of knowledge. That kind of forceful resistance is what I would call "religious conviction."
Posted by: Josh Yelon | Nov 7, 2004 5:23:02 AM
What's really scary is that maybe 1% of Americans know what PNAC stands for, and .01% know what they advocated.
How do you think that would change the public's view of the "WMD" rationale?
Posted by: scarshapedstar | Nov 7, 2004 5:28:19 AM
Josh, that statistic isn't enough to support your claim. People tend to be wrong in a way that supports their candidate(shamelessy cribbing from VolokhC here). Thus, it is possible that a great majority of those Kerry supporters don't really know whats going on either and simply happen to break in the right direction because Kerry is on the right side of that issue.
Posted by: Glenn Bridgman | Nov 7, 2004 5:34:35 AM
It's part of a larger suite of statistics which does in fact make the possibility you bring up extremely unlikely. I understand your point, and it's the first thing I thought of, too. But it turns out not to be the case.
Posted by: Kimmitt | Nov 7, 2004 5:38:20 AM
Scar: I don't think it would change anything.
First of all, there's nothing that evil about PNAC. The only real problem with PNAC is the fact that they live in a fantasy world where liberators are greeted with flowers and chocolate. I suppose you could say that they're evil in that they're negligent: it's negligent to allow yourself to be deluded about the real outcome of war.
But in truth, I think it doesn't matter. Bush's support is what you might call "unconditional love." It doesn't matter what he does.
Posted by: Josh Yelon | Nov 7, 2004 5:38:31 AM
"What's really scary is that maybe 1% of Americans know what PNAC stands for, and .01% know what they advocated."
Well, the name helps to give a general idea of what they want. More specifically, what is it they advocated? I'm not part of that 1% ( unless it comes down to bringing democracy and the free market to the whole world through conventional military invasion ).
Posted by: WeSaferThemHealthier | Nov 7, 2004 6:48:24 AM
Josh Yelon,
More important, Bush's hard-core Kool-Aid drinkers have a powerful need to believe that *he* is different, that he is "God's man." They invested a great deal of themselves psychically, back in 2000, in the belief that he was the anti-Clinton: that he was the man who saved us from the pot-smoking, lying, womanizing darft-dodger, and brought back honor, dignity and integrity to the White House.
If Bush were captured on live video feed on Fox News, fucking a Great Dane up the ass and then wiping his dick off on the American flag, his hardest-core supporters would miss maybe half a beat (if that) before resuming the "Bush supports moral values" mantra.
Posted by: Kevin Carson | Nov 7, 2004 7:10:01 AM
BTW, Josh, PNAC is evil less because of its general foreign policy agenda (which is echoed in all sorts of neocon periodicals and think tanks) than because its membership is a who's who of Rummy's Pentagon cronies and Bush's top policy leadership, and because they remarked on the need (pre-911) for "another Pearl Harbor" to give them the green light for their agenda.
Posted by: Kevin Carson | Nov 7, 2004 7:13:09 AM
You suspect many people will die? Is that because people are mortal?
Posted by: Modern Crusader | Nov 7, 2004 7:37:22 AM
Of course it was a Good Thing that happened in 1929.
It was the end of crony capitalism period and the beginning of the welfare state period. It was the same sort of Good Things as liberation of slaves or independence from the British.
When a new Good Thing comes to replace The Thing That Has Gone Bad, there is always a good chance of calamity of some sort, death, financial collapse, etc. When the next Good Thing come, the transition, hopefully, won't be too bloody and destructive, but we will only know when we see it.
Posted by: abb1 | Nov 7, 2004 7:54:05 AM
1> I've argued this half a dozen places.
2> The Democratic party of the 1920's was the Dixiecrat party. The New Deal coalition was built on a compromise between Dixiecrats and everybody else (mostly). Dixiecrats and their Western Party allies are the modern Republican party.
3> When the race issue started to burble after WWII, THEN you saw Strom Thurmond running for President and the slow decay of the power of the New Deal coalition. Which finally committed hari-kari (seppuku) in the 60's. (But it didn't bleed to death until the 70's.)
4> Since '68 the D's have won three presidential elections...or rather, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon and then Ross Perot kicked the shit out of the R's. On the congressional level, the D's have been fighting a rear-guard action since '78. The actual strongly successful period for the New Deal was 1932-1948. (With a resurgence in 63-68 followed by the Nixon appeasement policy of 68-74). (And it should be noted, that Bill Clinton got 49% as an incumbent but only 43% as the challenger, in line with Dukakis, Mondale, etc. I read that as saying that the base D vote is 38% plus 5% almost D indies. Meaning Kerry picked up around 5% from the middle. So anybody else would need 5% more than that to get anywhere, which has to come from the middle. The ends are taken.)
5> The much better fancy maps are here: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/
Noting, particularly the last, most troubling graph.
6> To regain majority party status, as you say, something awful has to happen, or the D's must change to forge a compromise with the West OR the South.
7> The 'something awful has to happen' strategy seems to me to be based on the notion of well, Kansas, basically,, undergoing a miraculous conversion and coming over to the side of the Lord or something.
8> The New Deal as far as I can see is mostly still in effect, along with large parts of the Great Society. Granted, rollbacks have occurred amoungst the alphabet soup agencies, welfare is limited, rather than unlimited and ... oh, there are no 'production reduction' measures in place like plowing under a third of all crops. The BIG difference is the reduction in taxes, with no commensurate reduction in spending. So the question is, in the case of economic disaster, what is the cure? Raise taxes? And...?
9> Does that imply the original meaning of 'progressive'? That is, progressive socialism? (As opposed to progressive meaning something generically futuristic.) How far are we supposed to progress here in this future um, dystopic wonderland?
10> Which brings up the REAL question: Which is it?
Is the Democratic party primarily the party of the Left complete with the full wad of associated inclinations? That is total egalitarianism, elimination of religion, elimination of capitalism and over-arching central planning? That is, (as I heard someone say who liked to brag that she wore hammer & sickle panties) basically Lenin's New Economic Plan (Industry centrally directed, small bidness and farms left alone)? Or maybe Chomsky's 'libertarian socialism' of some sort? You can claim I'm really pushing the envelope of what D's might be willing to initially put up with INITIALLY, but to be progressive you've got to be going SOMEWHERE. (And in light of the New Deal reference, the obvious widely expressed/desired goal was full socialism.) Basically, are the D's the party of Sweden?
OR
Is the Democratic party the party of Liberalism, with associated non-socialist inclinations? That is the party of some British/Switzerland hybrid? (Best I can come up with as the actual Liberal tendency seems to be in the toilet. So it goes.)
11> In the former case, I think they should explicitly say so, so that Naderites and such will have their party and D's can work towards dominance based on a 'vision'. In such instance however, I expect they will start with no more than 33% of the vote. I also find it hard to see how you can argue that you need the New Deal Redux in the event of economic failure since plenty of New Deal policies will have been place, whereas, if you argue that the New Deal failed in eliminating capitalism then, yes, you have something to work toward and/or advocate.
12> In the latter case, pining for the 1930's really makes no sense. It wasn't exactly a liberal decade. Exciting, maybe, dramatic, h'ok, but not exactly a time of wide-spread tolerance but rather a period of wide-spread extremism (Huey Long anybody?).
13> At any rate, I don't see a Leftish agenda gaining any traction in the South, and certainly not in the West. That would be why the Republican party currently holds sway in those states, since they have rejected the Left in wide part. At any rate 'Going South' won't work. The South tends to overt political conformism but is perfectly tolerant of eccentricity, which seems to be the reverse in the north, where eccentricity is a political statement. There's no way to break into the south without taking the whole damn thing, although you can nibble along the edges.
14> Waiting for the disaster is a bit like waiting to 'hit the trifecta'. Which would be the disaster the R's were hoping for. Furthermore, it is the essence of conservatism to look backwards (or so they always told me) to some mythical or at least long-gone Golden Age. If the R's are looking back fondly at the 50's or maybe the 80's (or, I am sure in a few instances, the 1850's or the 30's. That is, 30 *AD*.) then evidently the D's are looking backwards to their own fondly remembered Golden Age of the 30's (19) or the 60's. Isn't it a little disturbing when the major political tendencies are looking backwards? Who's looking at the actual future?
Nononono, not the glorious future of a statue of Lenin in every town square or the glorious future of keeping the little woman at home, I mean the *actual* future of ya know, stuff. Like space and technology and also the bad shit like a sea of vicious ethnic wars and assorted wacky fundamentalists of all political stripes.
No insult intended by any above, in case it comes across that way. (It's in a tiny little text box!)
ash
['Just askin'.']
Posted by: ash | Nov 7, 2004 7:55:11 AM
I've been saying the exact same thing.
Unfortunately, you forget a third possibility. After the meltdown, the Republican faithful could continue to live in a fantasy world, seeing Bush's failures as successes. Structural factors (gerrymandering, the Senate, the electoral college) could allow Republicans to retain control despite popular opposition. Republican power could preclude the exposure of their mistakes and malfeasance.
In fact, the 2004 election was depressing for exactly this reason: it failed to punish failure. It remains to be seen how much accountability remains in the system.
Posted by: AWC | Nov 7, 2004 7:55:46 AM
Something that frustrated me other the last four years is how Bush managed to consistently lower the definition of success, for example on job growth or Iraq WMD (having nuclear, to having some, to having intentions to have something one day).
Like Matt, I think Bush will have to face the music in several areas, although I am rather less pessimistic. So here's my modest proposal to Matt - challenge conservative bloggers to set out _now_ their targets for Bush. What does success in Iraq look like? How much will he bring down the budget deficit? What will happen with the Supreme Court? If he can get those opinions fixed now, it will be harder for someone like Reynolds to claim three years from now that smoking wasteland Iraq has gone far better than he hoped.
On the flip side, to be intellectually consistent, Matt would also have to set his thresholds for what would be a successul/failed presidency.
I know there is a lot of uncertainty so it may be necessary to formulate the goals in policy rather than outcome terms in some areas (e.g. deficits). But I think it might force people to put a stake in the ground. It would also serve as a guide to who had a better understanding of how the world works.
My two cents,
Tom
Posted by: Tom Gunderson | Nov 7, 2004 8:10:14 AM
That last graph is indeed disturbing: Think of it: 11$ of the Democratic party lives in places where they never meet Republicans! At last, an explaination for the Democratic Underground...
But what's the nature of those exclusively Democrat counties? How'd they get that way? Is there some tipping point, where the majority of Democrats becomes so oppressive for any Republicans in the area that they flee? It can't be just demographics, because there's no demographic group that is that exclusively Democratic.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Nov 7, 2004 8:47:41 AM
But this isn't normal cluelessness. The 60% I quoted above is incorrect. The actual number is 72% of Bush supporters and 26% of Kerry supporters believe Hussein had WMDs. One possible explanation for the difference is that Bush supporters watch the news less. But we both know that's not it. It's clear that Bush supporters are *extraordinarily resistant* to that particular piece of knowledge. That kind of forceful resistance is what I would call "religious conviction."
Partially correct.
The part missing is the fact the GOP has virtually a complete stranglehold on the media. Fox is an arm of the RNC, the GOP presence on cable is almost total as is the case with commercial radio, and network news (already sympathetic to the GOP via corporate interests) has been completely cowed.
Wonder why so many believe Saddam had WMD despite the Kay and Duelfer Reports? Well, a GOP media infrastructure told them so.
Posted by: Jadegold | Nov 7, 2004 9:05:28 AM
"To regain majority party status, as you say, something awful has to happen, or the D's must change to forge a compromise with the West OR the South."Why not compromise with the South? Racial issues have lost their force. We could strike a grand bargain with the South to have universal lefty economic policies by moving to social issue federalism.Gay marriage in MA. No gay marriage in SC. Legalized pot in OR. Stoning of adulterers in UT.Anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion folks would be welcomed into the party as junior members, much as how pro-gay marriage and pro-abortion folks are welcomed into the Republican party as junior members.The real downside is we'd have to stop defending Roe v Wade, and so abortion would eventually become illegal in half the country.But with social issues removed from Washington, we could have a Democratic majority party devoted to economic populism and economic growth that could run strongly through the South, the Southwest, and the Plains, while keeping the current Democratic base.It may not be perfect, but it's better than being the minority party for a generation as the rich get richer, and everyone else gets screwed.
Posted by: Petey | Nov 7, 2004 9:21:06 AM
I think Matt captures the quandary, such as it is. If things go swimmingly for Republicans - and that seem highly unlikely - Democrats would be up a tree. But wanting things to get worse is something close to pathological (or suicidal). But I think the point raised by this election lies somewhere in between - in order for Democrats to show that they have alternatives that could do better, it may just be necessary to show that some Republican policies make things worse.
I don't want bad things to happen. I don't want financial meltdown, the erosion of civil rights, worsening of environmental conditions, complete decimation of housing programs (anyone watching that, huh?). But there may be some who need additional convincing. I think the best way to get things right, by the way, lies in between the heavy leftism of people I ike and the staunch conservatism of people I tend to disagree with. Bush would truly be dangerously effective if he gave the left more input into his decision making process. But he doesn't, and let the cons run free. We're not defining ourselves by what we're not, but some people need to understand things that way nevertheless. I'd say perhaps Dems just need to give time some time.
Posted by: weboy | Nov 7, 2004 9:27:45 AM
"The actual number is 72% of Bush supporters and 26% of Kerry supporters believe Hussein had WMDs. One possible explanation for the difference is that Bush supporters watch the news less."
Another possible explaination is that Bush supporters are aware that, while Saddam didn't have massive stockpiles of WMD, he DID have WMD programs, and dual use facilities, such that he could have been rapidly armed with them again any time the sanctions stopped. Something people who want to believe Bush lied are likely to ignore.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Nov 7, 2004 9:55:48 AM
Matt makes a point about horrible events ushering in a long time Democratic majority. But you could look at it from a slightly less optimistic light: that is to say, that the 'normal' zeitgeist of the electorate is quite conservative and only thru an event as horrible as the depression did people wake up and smell the coffee. Not much to be optimistic for there.
I think chimpco has proved that being too conservative has no downside. For years the dlc has told democrats we needed ignore the 'base' and to run to the center, because that's where the votes were. They predicted failure for Bush in the runup to this election because he pandered to his base and ran a relentlessly negative campaign. I wonder if they are re-thinking that strategy thru right now...naaaaah.
Posted by: jdw | Nov 7, 2004 10:07:19 AM
Wonder why so many believe Saddam had WMD despite the Kay and Duelfer Reports? Well, a GOP media infrastructure told them so.
I remember Jon Stewart asking Chris Wallace (yes, of Fox News) about this, and Wallace said (had to do some major googling to find it, but it's basically what I heard) "I think, frankly, that there were certain people in this country who wanted that information, or misinformation, out there."
Posted by: latts | Nov 7, 2004 10:14:54 AM
"Another possible explaination is that Bush supporters are aware that, while Saddam didn't have massive stockpiles of WMD, he DID have WMD programs"
I'd say this has more to do with a successful propoganda effort then anything. Look back at adminsitrations words about Saddam pre-his invasion of Kuwait....when he was our buddy. Oh sure, he had a few faults, but he wasn't toooo bad.
But once we decided he was no longer on the team he was really bad. Evil. Horribly evil. Almost as evil as Hitler. Hitlerlike. More evil then Hitler.
Within months our erstwhile ally, a common two-bit tyrant became the very incranation of evil. A threat. A huge, massive threat. A huge massive threat coming to kill our babies and eat them.
Little wonder people were shaken at the prospect of his programs of mass destruction weapons related program activities.
Posted by: jdw | Nov 7, 2004 10:17:16 AM
