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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Graham C
Published Letters: 61
Or, more broadly, the paradox of "libertarians" in general:
On the one hand, they can turn a free trade agreement into "oligarchy!", a tax-funded health care system into an "Orwellian superstate!", and generally regard any democratic state that actually exists today with extreme paranoia.
On the other hand, they can speak of their candidate-of-the-hour in adulatory, messianic terms that would have embarrassed a paid flatterer at the court of Versailles.
A while ago, I compared a map of the 2008 Democratic primary outcomes (including the likely outcomes for states that haven't voted yet) with the map of linguistic regions in David Hackett Fischer's book - and thought the parallels were striking. So this article is a nice affirmation for my own personal amateur hypotheses.
But by equating Barack Obama's support with Greater New England, I think you're overlooking something: Those parts of the west where neither New England/Nordic nor Southern/Mexican settlers predominated.
Insofar as Obama belongs to any regional American culture, he belongs to his mother's Kansas - in other words, to a state settled by Methodists from the Mid-Atlantic States. And Obama's success in predominately white states extends beyond Greater New England to the central Great Plain and Rocky Mountain states.
Political parties based in Greater New England tend to be minority parties - fine. But political parties based in Greater New England AND the (north) west? (i.e. Essentially that combination made the Republican Party the majority party from the end of the Civil War until the New Deal.) Allowing that Barack Obama can't compete with John McCain in the South and might have trouble competing with him among urban blue collar white people, is it impossible to imagine him succeeding in those western "red states" where McCain was crushed not only Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, but even (in Montana and Nevada) by Ron Paul?
A Democratic Party that constantly relies on candidates from the South to snatch one or two swing states from the Republicans doesn't look like something that could ever attain the status of a real majority party. And a strategy that requires the Democratic Party to nominate candidates from one particular regional culture is unfair to everybody else in the country. (Anyway, as the quasi-Southern Al Gore showed, nominating Southerners isn't even a guarantee of success.) Maybe it's better to take a risk on broadly redrawing the geographical/political lines of the United States, instead of simply making 2008 the eleventh round of "Woo the South".
.........
"a Democratic Party that constantly relies on candidates from the South to snatch one or two swing states from the Republicans doesn't look like something that could ever attain the status of a real majority party"
"People must be on something strong tonight. I think we can safely say the Dems are in no imminent danger of being overly reliant on the south for anything for at least the past 35 years. However what HAS changed since the south has gone solidly Republican, is that we ARE overly reliant on a handful increasingly slim Dem-leaning states such as Wisconisn, Minnosota, Oregon and Washington, New Hampshire, New Jersey, et al."
.........
Since you managed to read "a Democratic Party that constantly relies on candidates from the South to snatch one or two swing states from the Republicans" as "the Dems are over-reliant on the South", you're not in a good position to be making jokes about being on something strong.
A Democratic Party that was secure in all the states it slimly won in 2004 would still be a losing party. To control enough electoral votes to win the presidential election, the Democratic Party depends on winning in additional swing states - which since 1968 means the South, Southwest, and the Rust Belt. The northern part of the country between the Mississippi and the west coast is practically assumed to be uncontested. (Excepting the 1992 election, when Ross Perot threw Montana to Clinton.)
As Michael Lind is pointing out, the Democrats do relatively well in the states currently defined as "swing states" when they nominate people from the Southern culture, and relatively badly when they don't. A winning strategy for the Democrats means either nominating Southerners, or redefining which states it competes for.
Michael Lind is suggesting the first strategy. I'm saying the second one deserves some thought too.
"...whites are comfortable with black people, but much more uneasy about certain aspects of black culture, those associated with the so-called black underclass. Being black is OK; acting black, in certain ways, isn't."
The fact that "acting black" is essentially shorthand for "certain aspects of black culture associated with the so-called black underclass" (i.e. crime, violence, black nationalism) more or less sums up "the real meaning of race in America" right there.
Well and good, but our Democratic Party has the same problem.
Our dependence on a coalition of affluent, highly educated, socially liberal "professionals" on the one hand, and socially conservative working-class blacks and Latinos on the other, may be secure so long as blacks and Latinos continue to see themselves as embattled minorities. (Not exactly the kind of conditions you want to be necessary to ensure your party's continued success.)
But the fuss over whether the registration of new black voters this year helped carry Proposition 8 in California this year is telling. Eventually, the Democratic Party may be forced to choose: Continue to support such socially progressive policies as recognizing the right of gays to marry? (Thus alienating working-class voters, but perhaps picking up some libertarian voters - if, of course, the party throws out its economically progressive policies.) Or abandon such socially progressive policies? (Thus alienating professional voters, but perhaps picking up some working-class white voters.)
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
