Category: The Dish

Leave aside the actual merits of the current neocon-Clinton-Limbaugh campaign against Obama – that he’s linked to the Weather Underground, that his pastor is a "racist", that he cannot appeal to Reagan Democrats, that he’s another McGovern, that he’s a closet Communist, etc. etc. What strikes me is the energy with which these pundits actually derive from these associations and debates. It’s quite clear that they really anger up the blood of a certain class of people. And yet they don’t me, particularly. They seem pretty irrelevant to me, in the context of an election about a major war, a teetering economy, a weakened constitution, a mounting level of debt, a plummeting dollar, and a warming planet. I understand that this is politics, that these are vulnerabilities of associations, that these issues have some traction and a sliver of justification, but I still can’t get that worked up about them. Why, I wonder?

When you think about these controversies, you being to realize just how generationally-focused they are. For a lot of people under 40, the Weather Underground sound like an Austin Powers out-take or a rock band. Even if you come to the conclusion (as I do) that William Ayers is a scumbag, the issue is not a dispositive one. Ditto the obvious racial panic around Obama – about Wright, about Farrakhan, about affirmative action. This was Pat Buchanan’s view:

"Obama cannot concede that the anger of white America – that its right to equal justice has been sacrificed to salve the consciences of guilt-besotted liberals – is a legitimate anger."

But doesn’t that "white anger" feel very 1980s to you? Are white voters still motivated in large part by grievances about affirmative action (which, for the record, I strongly oppose)? You’d think that our cultural politics had remained untouched and unmoved since the Reagan era. You’d think that political demography was frozen at exactly the moment boomers came of age.

The truth is: the boomer media class is fighting the last war and misreading the current one. As Ambinder reminds us:

It doesn’t really matter if Barack Obama isn’t doing as well among white working class Dems as Hillary Clinton is. He doesn’t need their votes to win.

This election will be decided by white independents, African-Americans, new Hispanic voters, and a vast influx of younger Americans. Those are the people Obama has brought into the process; and they are the people who will change the face of American politics.

In fact, they already have. But the boomer elites have yet to notice.

In some ways, that’s the electoral question for Democratic super-delegates. The Clintons have managed to create something like the dynamic of previous red-blue general elections within the Democratic base itself. But that makes the base of their support white working class ethnics – the Reagan Democrats. But how would those voters lean if asked to pick between McCain and Clinton? Surely a Scots-Irish veteran hero is more competitive with them than Ms Wellesley. But in the other key swing group – independents – Obama and McCain are much more evenly matched. Moreover, Obama brings a massive advantage among the young and African-Americans and among Republican-leaning well-off independents. Hard to dispute this:

The congressional Democratic leaders don’t draw the same conclusion from Pennsylvania and earlier contests that many observers think they do: that Obama’s candidacy is fatally flawed because he has as yet been largely unable to win the votes of working class whites.

They point out something that has been largely overlooked in all the talk: The Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries were closed primaries. One key congressional Democrat says, "Yes, he doesn’t do really well with a big part of the Democratic base, but she doesn’t do well with independents, who will be critical to success in November."

Minnesota, Virginia, Colorado: these states may be where the real battle will lie.

"It’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense. I don’t have anything additional to say. It’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, I don’t have anything more to say … it’s nonsense. I reject it categorically," – John McCain referring to his endorser, John Hagee’s view that Katrina was payback for gays and sins in New Orleans.

Abercrombie & Fitch denies credit for the Obama speech trio:

Tom Lennox, VP-corporate communications for A&F, said the company doesn’t "seek product placement at all." He went on: "We appreciate the exposure, but can not take credit for it. So, thanks to the Obama campaign for this great product placement. We wish we had thought of it."

I blame the gays.

"I finally understand the party nostalgia for Reagan. Everyone speaks of him now, but it wasn’t that way in 2000, or 1992, or 1996, or even ’04. I think it is a manifestation of dislike for and disappointment in Mr. Bush. It is a turning away that is a turning back. It is a looking back to conservatism when conservatism was clear, knew what it was, was grounded in the facts of the world," – Peggy Noonan, WSJ.

I’ve been overwhelmed by lots of thoughtful emails on the racial question in this campaign. Here’s one particularly concrete and honest one about unconscious attitudes among liberals:

I’m white, and I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I’ve been for all but a few of the past twenty-five years. In the last few years, I’ve been heavily involved in a youth basketball program that my twelve year-old son participates in. The teams in the program are overwhelmingly African-American, and they play in leagues and tournaments throughout southeastern Michigan and in some neighboring states. Many of the teams they play are predominantly or exclusively African-American, many are all white. In watching these teams compete, as both a spectator and coach, I’ve had a revelation about how many white people have reflexively suspicious, if not antagonistic, attitudes about African-Americans.

 

For example, consider the differing reactions to games where one team blows out another.  Competition levels are often uneven in youth leagues, and scores of 45-10 are common.  In a Detroit league, when one African-American team dominates another by that kind of score, no-one objects.  It’s another day in the gym.  In a league in almost-all-white Livingston County, a white-on-white blowout elicits the same reaction. But how do the losing parents and coaches react when an African-American team blows out a white team?  There’s a palpable sense of anger and resentment.  The winning team is accused of playing dirty or "too physical" or of running up the score, or of having ringers who are really older than the maximum age, or (most revealingly) of being "thugs." 

 

These prejudiced responses come from whites in places like Howell, a town with a long and storied tradition of KKK activity, or Livonia, a quintessential enclave of middle-class Reagan Democrats.  But white left wingers from Ann Arbor react the same way.  Exactly. 

Two years ago, when my son was in the fourth grade, his team played a team from the west side of Ann Arbor, where "Impeach Bush" signs are found on every other lawn.  It was a blowout, and all those liberal parents were ready to throw my son’s team out of the league, contending that all of these black kids were a group of ringers who played too rough.  This is not an exaggeration.  The rest of my son’s team’s schedule was canceled, and the rest of their games were only against teams that volunteered to play them.  My son’s head coach, an African-American, was personally excoriated in an email campaign .  Shortly after this controversy, in the same league, I watched one all-white Ann Arbor team get blown out by another all-white team.  I think it was 20-0 at the end of the first quarter.  Nothing but laughs and smiles all around, and consolation ice-cream cones (or soy milk hot chocolates).  No-one’s schedule was changed as a result. No-one was raising threats against any coaches.

 

This is just a microcosm, but there’s a lot going on within it. Whites — of all political persuasions — don’t like to feel inferior to blacks.  They don’t like to compete on a level playing field with blacks, and, when they do compete and lose, they can’t accept the loss.  They insist that there must be some explanation besides the fact that they just weren’t as good.  None of the racial attitudes are overt.  But after seeing these attitudes repeated again and again and only when black kids are winning, it’s impossible to conclude that they are anything but racial, even though they might be represented as something else.

 

I still have hope.  I still think change is possible.  I’m going to do everything I can to work for Obama’s election in November.  But there’s a lot of prejudice in every part of the polity that’s gone unrecognized by those who hold it — even if it has been recognized and exploited by a cynical few of both parties who know just how to bring it out without calling its name.  In the contest with the Clintons, the Rovistas and their ilk, we may not win this time, but we must fight nevertheless.  As Danton said, "il nous faut de l’audace, et encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace."

NRO goes after ethanol:

There is little the U.S. government can do to make gasoline less expensive and nothing it can do about the weather in Australia. The production of ethanol, on the other hand, is directly related to government policies that subsidize it and require its use in gasoline. Absent government intervention, there would be little demand for ethanol. It has a lower energy content than gasoline, it is not significantly cheaper, and it is more difficult to transport to points of sale.

I have to say that the impact on carbon emissions of ethanol has changed my mind about this. This subsidized fuel is actually hurting the climate. That wasn’t the intention, of course. But it has become the result. And it has also helped tip millions of the poor across the planet into a bare-knuckled fight for affordable food.

A reader writes:

Isn’t it crazy how all the hope you’ve had for your country your whole life can be drained out of you in one primary election cycle?  I’m 26 and if this thing takes the turn it looks like it’s going to take, this will be the very last time I submit myself to this. I’m not built for this sort of disappointment. After the last 8 years, I can’t believe we are still trapped in the same gutter of fear and deception.

Maybe everyone was right about Obama.  Maybe I have been naïve.  The Clintons knew all along it would come to this.  Maybe they didn’t expect it now, but they knew they’d have to get the White House this way.  They’re just breaking out their General Election game early.  And it’s genius.  They ARE monsters.

But they are also wrong and it really is time to chill about the Clintons (memo to self: take your own advice).

Obama is not way to the "left" of the Clintons. (His only substantive policy difference with Clinton is on healthcare where is marginally to their right.) He obviously does care about working class voters, white and black. Why else would an Ivy League educated lawyer return to Chicago to work as a community organizer for the urban poor? He has a message and an approach that can unify – and no Democrat is going to win the White House by pivoting off white discomfort with a black man.

The next generation, meanwhile, needs to get real. This was never going to be easy or simple. Real change never is. Abandoning the process in the face of raw cynicism is what the Clintons want. They have to freeze out the millions of new voters if they are to retain their grip over their party. But the truth remains: with these millions of new voters and new donors, they can be defeated – and have been defeated. Despite massive advantages, the Clintons have been singularly unable to close the deal that was theirs’ for the asking only six months ago.

What they’re doing now is trying to out-psyche us. It’s all they have left. Don’t let them get into your head!

Robert Kaplan explains the significance of Petraeus’s promotion:

…the personnel changes indicate that the administration is desperate to show enough improvement in Iraq by the end of the year that an incoming Democratic president wouldn’t dare reduce troop levels precipitously and risk being blamed for a dramatic security meltdown. To wit, these appointments demonstrate that, irrespective of who will be the next president, the presidential transition has already begun — on this administration’s terms.

Mark Blumenthal looks at the popular vote argument.