Following on my last piece on How Race Distorts the Electorate, I want to discuss how Republican strategies during the Obama presidency have distorted the electorate. It’s hard to characterize the motives the GOP has had in each individual case but, collectively, they have pursued strategies that have had the effect of polarizing the electorate by race.
The most infamous example is the first-term obsession with the birth certificate. This was a naked example of using massive disinformation to alienate the president from low-intelligence white people. But it also absolutely infuriated black folks and made them more protective of the president than they otherwise would have been.
Similarly, the collective freak-out about ObamaCare and its characterization as some exotic un-American socialist scheme, was perceived by blacks as a barely-veiled racist attack both on the president and on their community.
The decision by Mitch McConnell and other party leaders to oppose Obama’s entire agenda before he even was sworn into office was seen by blacks as a totally unprecedented lack of respect that had never been done to any other president.
The decision to pursue widespread voter ID laws that disproportionately disenfranchise blacks was so toxic that it actually led to higher black turnout in the 2012 election than white turnout, for the first time ever. Following that up with the Supreme Court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act is like setting a nuclear bomb off. Attacks on Affirmative Action only exacerbate an already explosive opposition to the GOP in the black community. Holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt is another thumb in the eye.
The refusal to allow a vote on immigration reform in the House is infuriating Latinos.
Meanwhile, the right-wing media machine has been giving whites a steady diet of racial grievance. This has succeeded in driving up support for the GOP among whites, but the cost is an ever-increasing erosion of support among anyone of color.
Some Republican analysts, like Sean Trende, think that the GOP can continue to compete if they can get a greater share of the white voters. But he doesn’t fully appreciate how this is being done in practice. It’s done by stoking white resentment of racial minorities. Having a black president has made this vastly easier to do than it would have been with a white president.
And that’s what you’re seeing show up in the differential between the president’s approval number and the percent of the electorate that indicates support for Hillary Clinton. There will be a sling-shot effect that goes all one way. Ordinarily, we might expect a white presidential candidate to attract a less racially polarized electorate in both senses: they’d get more support from whites, but also less support from black, Latinos, and Asians. But the strategies the GOP has pursued have done two things to change that likelihood. They’ve permanently cut off the chance that people of color will vote for them, and they’ve made sure that people of color will be just as enthusiastic about voting for a white Democrat as they were to vote for a black one. Trying to take away people’s votes and health care, while showing them an unprecedented lack of respect will do that.
Put another way, the Republicans have mortgaged their future by making a deal with the devil. They tried to avoid changing by jacking up their support among whites to the maximal possible level, but they did it in a way that simply isn’t sustainable without a black president to rally against. Remove Obama, and the white voters start to trickle back, but there is no corresponding trickle back in the Republicans’ direction.
I’d describe the 12% of all voters who support Hillary but not Obama as more than a trickle.
BTW you never concluded our discussion at http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2014/5/1/10049/25970/36?mode=alone;showrate=1#36. You have left yourself open to the charge of exceptionalism in your tolerance of Jewish snti-semitism against Palestinians.
Well, you can certainly drive a wedge between my personal political values and the values of any religiously- or ethnic-based country. That’s easy. But there is a difference between the concept of an religiously-based country in theory and in practice. When I say that I support Israel, it doesn’t mean that I would have recommended creating it, nor does it mean that I agree with the policies they have pursued since 1973. It simply means that I can agree that Israel exists, has a right to exist within its UN-approved borders, and that I can understand their desire not to become a single-state with a Jewish minority. As designed, non-Jews are supposed to enjoy full citizenship within Israel, so it’s not that the discrimination is codified.
My biggest problem is still with their refusal to live within their borders or to stop expanding into Palestinian territory. If they would agree to do that, I’d be okay with them being a Jewish state even though I wouldn’t want to live in a religious state or a state based on ethnicity.
The way that Israel is in practice is unacceptable to me for the reasons you mention, which is why I am a consistent critic. I want them to wake up and realize that they are harming themselves.
Unacceptable to anyone with a conscious. Hypocritical to anyone with a brain. I say this as a fellow member of the tribe.
The GOP decided to treat Obama like a dog from election day 2008, although the decision was kept quiet for a few months until legislative action on the Great Recession was required. It was basically unprecedented for the opposition party to universally oppose a newly elected prez’s economic program, even when the country was not in the throes of the greatest calamity since 1929.
Even after the (stolen) election of the (non-popularly) elected Bushco, the Dems united to support an (invalid) Repub prez after 9-11. Is there much doubt Repubs would not have supported Obama in a similar circumstance? Talk about a blame game!
It’s hard not to see this entire strategy as a very early decision to ramp up white grievance against the first black prez, whatever the long term consequences to the nation may be. “Conservatives” simply don’t care, and their judgment as to the best course for a pluralistic multi-racial nation is so rancid as to be almost unbelievable. They are delighted to drag their voters down to the lowest depths, to celebrate (and encourage!) all that is crappiest in them.
So the reality of electing the first black prez has been a return to more overt expressions of racism (think Conserva-Hero of the Week Cliven Bundy) and a return to racial resentment and anger on the part of more whites, fueled daily by the coaches of Team Conservative. They have as much ability to discern the best course for the nation as Netanyahu and his faction have for Israel.
Our “conservatives” are like the dog who just can’t stop eatin’ snacks out of the cat’s litter box. Stoking racial resentment is so easy and so time-honored for “conservatives”, they just can’t help themselves. Party over country, always.
I can’t help but notice that you put ‘conservatives’ in quotes in such a manner to suggest that they’re not really conservatives.
I love it when liberals do this denialism shit, as if the heirs of the New Right are somehow betraying the ideals of conservatism. Let me clue you into something: there was never a period of time from Burke til now when conservatism was anything but creeping neo-feudalism. Back when political philosophy and sociology was inchoate and incoherent and the lights of our nations believed in some pretty vile shit, sure, you could advocate for the basic tenets of conservatism in such a way that wouldn’t get you laughed out of the room. In much the same way that three hundred years ago you could advocate for a literal reading of Genesis without getting laughed out of the university.
I find it especially ironic and hilarious that you’re putting conservatism, especially American-flavored conservatism, in scare quotes when talking about race-based ressentiment. I mean, really, WTF? If American conservatism throughout the centuries has been defined by one, and I mean one signature tactic it’d be race-based ressentiment.
Hell, American conservatives are so historically known for this vile strategy that you’d be justified putting conservative in scare quotes if they weren’t doing it.
You’re painting with a very broad brush. While it may be true of the movement as a whole that it was always primarily about the interests of the powerful, there were moderates who seemed motivated first and foremost by other interests. Those folks have been driven from the party. Now their coalition is led by those who suck up to money and power and powered by those who nurse grievances against the culture at large and the changes to come.
While it may be true of the movement as a whole that it was always primarily about the interests of the powerful, there were moderates who seemed motivated first and foremost by other interests.
Tis’ why I said conservative and not Republican. I hold British and Australian and Canadian and Mexican and Brazilian and Japanese conservatives in as much contempt as I do American ones.
The Republican party had some redeeming factors to it. Conservatism does not. And every time I ask leftists to defend conservatism as anything but a vehicle for arbitrary hierarchical domination, they try to argue narrow and inapplicable exceptions (I am so sick of hearing Roosevelt’s name by now) or flail and stick to glittering generalities. You know, ones like ‘b-b-but IDEAL conservatives would be against child labor and racism and antienvironmentalism because they’re REALLY interested in conserving society and this is totally not an equivocation’.
I’ve thought for some time that I prefer the term reactionary for these types. ‘Course they want to return to an age that never really was.
While I am no scholar of the movement, it seems to me that American conservatism has long been a movement without principles, only specific positions, and that simpleminded pigheaded preservation of an economically and socially reactionary status quo is the (often unconscious) motivation and often the stated justification. Hence there is quite a bit of contradiction, requiring some memory work by the adherents.
Of course it is comic to see today’s conservatives imagine that they would have been colonial revolutionaries or abolitionist liberators back in the day. Totally clueless as to their actual personalities and mentalities.
But it seems clear that what has occurred in the past decade or so is that fringe positions long included in the movement have now become much more accepted as valid, desirable and legitimate. Think nullification and secession and the latest cheering on of the sort of posse comitatus legal lunacy of Cliven Bundy and his Western militiamen. This stuff didn’t use to be presented as the backbone of modern “conservatism”.
Anyway, it’s hardly liberal “denialism” or an (unargued) desire to postulate some “ideal conservatism” to make the point that today’s version of the movement celebrates and advocates the most toxic and extreme rightwing positions possible or imaginable.
Hence “conservatism”. Your mileage may vary. But glad to provide you with some “hilarity”….
Right now “conservative” is really just the label that’s pinned on this particular group of people and these particular thought patterns. I mean, if people who want to tear down the government, destroy the land, and even rewrite our history are “conservative,” the word has no meaning.
So that’s one reason for the scare quotes. The word is drained of all meaning that it might have, so the scare quotes show that you’re using it as a label.
Which is important, because you’re right, it’s not like there’s some platonic essence of conservatism that is stable and unchanging through history. What really happens is that people form themselves into coalitions and start fighting each other, and then someone pins a label on the coalition.
But if you look under the labels, you can see some consistent patterns. For instance, what we call conservatism now includes this strong anti-government element that runs clear through our history.
In fact, one of the most basic reasons people came here in the first place was to get away from the government. And then of course when the Constitution came along, the attitude of the anti-federalists was that they didn’t free themselves from one distant, meddling government in London only to set up another one in New York.
So you head West, into the territories, but goddamn if the government doesn’t keep following you.
And so on.
euzoius
Stephen Stralka
And this is where you’re mistaken. Conservatism does have a principle. American liberalism’s is the advancement of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms; libertarianism’s
founding principle is the elimination of statism; conservatism’s is arbitrary, hierarchical domination.
Seriously. That’s the founding principle. You can draw a line from Burke to Hooker to Calhoun to O’Conner to Buckley Jr. and all of them will flat-out admit that it’s a good thing that society is divided into privileged hierarchies and actions that weaken the hierarchy in any way — no matter the necessity or justification — are to be opposed at any and all costs. If a conservative allows this hierarchy to be weakened its only to stave off an even more existentially threatening change.
So when viewed in that light, puzzling actions of conservatives like endorsing the 1st and 2nd incarnations of KKK and South Carolina’s nullification and flaunting the law to oppose American Civil Rights lose their mystery. Similarly, the union of religious neoconfederates and Randroids and plutocrats ceases to lose its mystery, because while they may disagree on the particulars of this arbitrary, hierarchical domination they agree that there must be one.
Conservatives do not act radical or align into disjointed coalitions because they’re taken with dancing mania or discovered some new ideology or whatever. They act radical and break bread because they see it as their only opportunity to oppose major changes to the structure of arbitrary, hierarchical domination.
They have done this for generations and hence why I rankle when liberals mislabel conservative as ‘radical’ or try to slip in a definition that denies 200+ years of beliefs and actions of people who describe themselves as conservative.
It’s quite boring when someone tries to impose their version of an ideology on you by simply insisting upon it.
When I use the word “conservatives,” I mean a member of the Conservative Movement, or, in other words, a Goldwaterite or Reaganite. I’m willing to include John Birchers in the category, even though there was an historic split between them in the lead-up to 1964.
But, others will insist that what I call conservative is a bastardization of the conservatism of Eisenhower and Nixon and Ford and Rockefeller and even Dole.
Still others will insist that they’re all of a type and indistinguishable from each other.
While still others will insist that true conservatism never resided in the country club Republicanism of its Yankee roots, but can best be explained only by social conservatism and Southern plantation culture.
I understand your point, but it’s not worth arguing with people about the correct definition. Just try to make sure you are understood clearly.
Or to put it another way, the GOP has created a new bloc that is motivated to vote against Republicans. As they themselves know, these are the most reliable voters.
Along the lines of your post, I happened to hear this NPR segment/discussion between Arun Roth and Mara Liasson on our trip home yesterday afternoon. I was so miffed about it that upon arrival home, contacted both the show and the NPR ombusdmen about oh-so subtle political bias.
While not factually incorrect, it was the emphasis on Democrats’ problems with the upcoming elections, vis-a-vis Obama’s approval ratings and the core constituences, like single women, not voting. Ms. Liasson even pointed out that NPR/she would be looking at these self-same women voters AND GOP outreach efforts to them during the coming week.
I invite you to give a listen and weigh in. IMO, it’s the sublety of the meme being promoted that is bad for Democrats and good for Republicans. It’s laughable that she should be their National Political Correspondent and Arun Roth gets no pass in my book either.
http://www.npr.org/2014/05/04/…..crats-sake
Lack of depth in mainstream news coverage? I’M SHOCKED; I’M SHOCKED!
Give them time. They’ll catch up to Martin’s analysis about two years into Hillary’s second term.
Well done, BooMan.
I’m often frustrated by politics, and angered by the Republicans, but seeing it all together like this makes me terribly sad.
It’s so ugly, and they are doing it in the name of our country. They disgust me.
I agree. I love his insights. He reminds me of Al Giordano (minus the contempt for his own readers) back when Al was blogging. This post was one of his best.
Blacks are changing their registration to Republican in order to make a difference in close primary races and boot out some of the crazies. They likely will crossover in general elections unless there are some candidate who damp down the crazy. In a state like Mississippi, that might have some effect.
As this moves forward, you might see some contradictory statistics.
In addition, some of the Reagan Republican whites who thought an entrenched Democratic Party in Southern states had gotten corrupt are going to be swing voters and ticket-splitters, and it will have nothing at all to do with ideology. It will be about honest dealings, competence, and dependability. Incompetence got to be a shibboleth with Sarah Palin. Some very well educated Republicans love to posture as against the pointy-headed intellectuals. They are now coming off as incompetent. The shtick got old.
Hmm…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/05/1297068/-Early-ballots-in-the-NC-primary
.
To be fair, “defeated” in quotation marks …
Another important marker in the 2016 presidential election …
○ Poll: Clinton tops Bush, Rubio among Hispanic voters for 2016 (July 2013)
○ Florida senator Marco Rubio cannot turn around the GOP’s sinking numbers among Hispanic voters (March 2013)
Democrats have warm feelings for Secretary Clinton, giving her a sizzling 78.7 degree score, followed by Vice President Biden with 65.7 degrees, Sen. Warren with 63.9 degrees, Gov. Dean with 57 degrees and Gov. Cuomo with 55.6 degrees.
I saw an estimate, based on some complicated polling, that Obama’s race cost him 5% of the electorate in 2008 but gained him 3%. Even a 2% swing back makes it an incredibly heavy lift for the Republicans to ever win the Presidency again. If, as you suggest, some of that 3% gain is sticky and will persist the situation for the Republicans borders on the impossible. Take Obama’s 2012 win, add 3% for deracializing the presidential election and another 1% for demographic changes and any candidate starts with a 55-45% advantage. That would make even Eisenhower-Stevenson ’52 or Reagan-Carter into a squeaker.
Starting in 2014 they’ve got both houses of Congress for the foreseeable future, and with no agenda they need to pass, an endless stream of vetoes equals unlimited fodder for campaign ads.
They don’t need the White House, except possibly for Supreme Court nominees. And there’s no law — just institutional norms, and norms don’t restrain these people — saying you have to replace Justices. Just leave the seats empty, whether via filibuster, or defeating every Dem. nominee on a party line vote.
Complete and utter stasis through 2020, and perhaps further. If there’s still a republic by then.
So what’s the backup plan if a black swan goes against them (say, Jeb Bush is caught fucking a pig or Preibus gets outed as a Grand Dragon) while they’re pursuing a strategy of indefinite nullification?
I mean, this rearguard strategy sounds well and good because it implies that the Republican Party doesn’t need to change in any way — but is this really a wise idea? It’s sort of like betting your life’s savings on a gamble that has an 80% chance of increasing your income by 10% and a 20% chance of wiping you out.
you’re way too pessimistic. Even if you’re right that we’ll lose the Senate in November, we’ll win it right back in 2016.
And then they win it back in 2018, Dems take it in 2020, lose it in 2022, and win it in 2024.
It’s entirely possible that we’ll simply enter a generation of a smaller conservative electorate that votes every two years and a larger general electorate that votes every four.
With half the Senate elected in off-year elections, and the built-in bias from big, square, empty GOP states, that’s a recipe for stasis into the foreseeable future.
And one for suffering on a massive scale.
No revolution without its martyrs.
Sigh, from the mouths of babes.
Those contradictions don’t heighten themselves, you know…
In the death throws of an old paradigm and political alignment, one party stands astride the nation shouting “NO!” This will continue for a while. They’ve been gumming things up as long as I can remember but never worse than now. But it won’t last. It can’t last. Demographics dictate an electorate evolving toward the light.
They don’t have even the House securely. Boo estimated it would take a 7-point swing for us to win the House from 2012 results. If we’re already 55%-45%, that’s only 2 more points. There are at least 2 things that could get us there, easily; public recognition of what’s in the Ryan budget (especially voucherizing Medicare) and ongoing Republican demands to repeal Obamacare when, by 2016, the entire healthcare system will be depending on it.
It’s possible we’d lose it back in 2018 but that’s a relatively positive situation for us – we get two years after each Presidential election to enact useful legislation, followed by 2 years of obstruction. That could work out to a very function pro-liberal ratchet.
You mean there’s still a “republic” now?
Wikipedia:
Let’s parse that one a bit, shall we?
Ummmm…that would mean that “the people’s” wishes…those of the majority…were the driving force behind government actions.
Oh.
How many polls have we seen that state massive opposition to the U.S. economic imperialist foreign policy drift since Iraq was unmasked as a boondoggle, Blood For Oil war? How many polls reflect the equally massive public resistance to the rapidly metastasizing surveillance state cancer? No matter his protestations of good will and innocence, how many Americans really swallow Obama’s “Well, we won’t let that happen anymore!!!” bullshit? How many suggest that a rapidly shrinking minority of the U.S. population approves of the actions of Congress of the Obama administration? And these are polls that are sponsored…as in “paid for” by the PermaGov!!! And yet the 1% hits just keep on coming!!!
Ummmm…all I have to say to that is “Bush 2000” and “Bush 2004.”
Two Bush preznits already with a third in the wings warming up; one Clinton preznit plus his wife in Congress, then as Secretary of State and now a heavy favorite to be President herself.
Hmmmm…
There’s gotta be a new word for this form of government.
Techno-fascism comes to mind. The power of the media…a technological power, bet on it…is brought to bear on the minds and emotions of the electorate at such a level of power that it at least temporarily warps enough peoples’ minds to the point where some serious percentage of the population think that they have a vote when really all they have been given is a chance to look like they are voting. The results have been pre-determined, either by outright vote fraud or…more subtly…by fixing the election so that it is a win/win situation for the PermaGov controllers no matter who actually wins.
Republic?
Not hardly.
RatPublic, more like.
DemRats and RatPublicans in collusion. No “two party system,” simply a Uniparty with two false flags.
Long may it wave.
Or is that “waver?”
WTFU.
Later…
AG
Good post.
Of those who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, how many would not vote for Hillary in 2016 but would leave a blank, vote 3rd party or stay home altogether?
Nicely framed my friend. I agree. Can’t see the Democrats losing many votes to the Republicans. Our enemy, if we have one, will be apathy. Can Hillary excite people to turn out the way Obama did? She’s got to steer clear of sleazes like Lanny Davis and idiots like Mark Penn.
Here? Everyone.
OT: Cecily McMillan verdict. Guilty 2nd degree assault on a police officer.
For reflexively elbowing a police officer who grabbed her from behind at Occupy Wall Street.
That’s fucked up.
Maybe it’s because I am barely into my thirties, but I don’t see how racist whites will actually vote for Clinton just because she’s not black when she’s going to enable blacks and latinos and Muslims getting into power and destroying America, at least in their view.
I guess I’ll flat out believe it when I see it. Because once the noise machine turns it’s guns on HRC it’s not going to pretty and we’ll see the raw effect the candidate’s race actually has. I currently think Race is just one part of the larger “Tribal” issue.
Something that you may not understand because of your age is racism is often not quite so obvious. A lot of people who don’t consider themselves racist would vote for Hillary but not for Obama. They would argue if you said they were against him because he was black. They would tell you they were against him for one of the countless prejudices they have against blacks that they ascribe personally to him. The fact that he’s this or that.
Heck, Sterling doesn’t see himself as racist. How could he be racist when he has a black girlfriend and pays so much in salary to black players. He just doesn’t want his girlfriend seen with him in public. Nothing racist about that he’d tell himself (as will his apologists). Same for Cliven Bundy. He’ll say his talks about “the negro” are just objective observations shared with the best of intent, to help these lazy shiftless people who live on the public dole. His welfare cows, you ask? What welfare cows. It’s my right to graze my cattle on this here land. That’s what he’d say. But heck, I love black people — the good ones.
Remember, most people are not deep thinkers. Most people are not particularly self reflective.
“Remember, most people are not
deepthinkers.”It disgusts me every election October how people just regurgitate the political slogans that they have heard the most of on TV instead of offering at least a re-phrasing.
Being latino–oh excuse me, Obama wants me to be white now–I am indeed familiar with non obvious racism.
Anyhow I guess we’ll see.
The phenomenon has a strong regional correlation: Appalachia. A very significant number of white voters in Appalachia would have voted for Clinton but not Obama.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/05/12/514258/-White-Voters-Obama-and-Appalachia
As for the black-white differential in presidential elections, Obama was much closer to the established pattern than is often assumed. As Larry Elder points out, NO Democratic candidate since 1964 has won the “white vote”.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/larry-elder/hey-michael-moore-clinton-gore-and-kerry-lost-the-white-
vote-too.html
Again, this is largely southern and Appalachian whites skewing the “white vote”.
To what extent will Hillary’s gender help/hinder her, relative to Obama, especially given the greater propensity for women to vote?
Will Hillary’s age/health/energy be a factor +/- again given the greater propensity for older voters to vote?
Finally, in what ways will she have to define herself as different from Bill, and from Obama, in order to maximise her potential vote?
An excellent analysis, Booman. I love your insightful thought.
I do remind you that we are still in danger of the Republican’s puppet masters taking over the Democratic Party as AG says they already have.
Also, look for Republicans running as independents. A prime example is Bruce Rauner in Illinois. He has the (R) nomination but bills himself as non-political independent. His wife claims to be a lifelong Democrat, even though she has donated to Republican candidates and never to a Democratic candidate. I fear that the general revulsion against Illinois politics may make this a winning strategy.
I saw a Rauner ad early yesterday that made my blood run cold. A man, I think he said his name was Manny Ortega, claiming to have been chairman of Latinos for Obama, says he supports Bruce Rauner because he’s not a politician and will clean up the mess in Springfield, blah blah blah. The ad is paid for by “Citizens for Rauner”, i.e. Rauner and his wife.
Rauner is another vulture capitalist, sued many times for nursing home abuse. His opponent, Pat Quinn, the incumbent Governor, is one of the most inept politicians ever to disgrace Springfield, a running joke who only became Governor because of the impeachment of Rod Blagojevich.
Notice Rauner is embracing Latinos, saying in effect, “It’s OK if you voted for Obama, but you should like me too.” He’s slick, not a dummy like Romney. No weird religious ties. Talks about fixing the schools (privatizing) and term limits (all the longterm pols are Democrats). The racist GOP voter has no choice but to vote for Rauner anyway, because the default is to leave the state in totally Democratic hands.