American electoral politics: a brief introduction

I voted for Nader in 2000 (ducks to avoid rotten cabbage) but did so because I lived in GA, and knew my electoral vote was going to Bush anyway. This was my one time flirt with 3rd party boosterism, in an attempt, as naive as it was, to try and make a viable 3rd party candidate a possibility for the future. Looking back at the joke that Nader became and the damage that was inflicted on the country by Bush, I probably should have voted for Gore, even though he still would have lost GA because of that damned electoral college all-or-nothing bullshit.

To me the key point is 12 – regardless of how the individual activist feels, I really feel that there’s a baseline of consequentialism one has to have to earn the label of activist. And that baseline is: does the person in question evaluate tactics and strategy on the basis of their outcomes? If not at all, person in question is not an activist.

Steve Williams – I believe the electoral dynamic is “democracies are run by those who show up.”

The entire Bush anti-terror program, the Bush tax cuts, and the Federal budget are ‘symbolic issues’ then, NAFTA was a symbolic issue?

What, then, are serious issues?

You forgot – politicos and commentators don’t realize that getting people to vote for you is the job of a political party, so you should try to do that. Treating people with contempt makes one feel superior but rarely makes them feel like your ally or encourages them to rally to your cause. The symbolism crack is especially amusing.

The idea that politics is driven solely by the movement of voters, as if institutions and organization don’t matter, is also a nice touch. Not true, of course, but important if you want to place on the blame on the powerless for our predicament.

To be fair, it seems nobody expected Carter.

Should Clinton have been a surprise? The first two disappointments he inflicted on the public were solid centrist, even libertarian policies: recognition of Taiwan and permitting gays to serve openly in the military.

And, incidentally, where were you in 1984 when the consensus among the graduates of Americas best high schools was that Reagan was elected by the working class, who are stupid and illiberal?

Is there numerical evidence that Democrats to Carter’s left who failed to vote for him made a difference in 1980?

And let me add: if the claim is that the so-called Professional Left failed not to vote, but to be enthusiastic workers for Team D, then that’s an incredibly stupid claim. You don’t get people to work for you by shitting on them. The Obama administration made a conscious decision to publicly shit on the Professional Left. Fine. That’s a political calculation – they bet that they’d gain more votes among centrists (or whoever) than they’d lose among the Professional Left. As I said, I don’t think there’s any evidence whatsoever that the Professional Left failed to show up in voting booths last fall. But if they failed to knock on doors, to man phone banks, to give big bucks, well that’s part of the political calculus. And one that, evidently, Team O completely got wrong.

But, again, Prof Berube (whom I like and whose blog I miss) is here to sneer at the shat-upon for failing to work harder for the shitters. It’s not just insulting; it shows a complete misunderstanding of politics.

I think this post would work better if the words “American Electoral Politics” in the title were replaced by the words “Largely Bullshit Democrat Excuses”

I, for one, did not vote in the mid-terms. First, for technical legal reasons – had not changed my registration after moving earlier in the summer – but my vote wouldn’t have mattered all that much. To be honest, here in IL, we barely managed to re-elect a weak liberal Democratic governor and a weak conservative Republican Senator, and some truly abysmal Republican Congress members.

In point of fact, the horrible whiny lefties are disappointed not least because some of us – like me – fooled ourselves that Obama would be better than his record or his word. He has not been. Obama is, in essence, a Rockefeller Republican, and while that may well be better than the current alternative, that isn’t what the country needs, or who represents my interests. Which isn’t whining – it’s being democratic.

The current American political scene is reminiscent of a psychology experiment in which the goal is to see how far the subject’s behavior can be distorted before he/she realizes that something is seriously wrong. I believe that the plutocrats are truly astounded by how far their mob control technicians can push the electorate into believing that they have no choice but to vote for greater concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the plutocracy.

When Reagan came to power, the per capita income of most Americans was effectively capped, and since then most of the wealth generated in our country has been funneled into the pockets of the rich, while middle and working class incomes have stagnated. This happened under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and the process continues to this day. The experiment continues, but some of us are refusing to participate.

> 4. Democratic president gives in to Republicans repeatedly on a
> handful of symbolic (and therefore important to politically active
> voters) issues, appointments, regulations, etc.
>
> 5. Left wing of Democratic party erupts in outrage at sellout Judas
> stealth-Republican president.

I have yet to receive any explanation from an Obama apologist, much less a good one, as to how inviting Peter G. Peterson into the inner economic councils of a Democratic Presidency and speaking in Peterson Foundation tropes about Social Security needing to be “fixed” (i.e. slashed and put on the road to termination) is a good liberal progressive Democratic idea. Please do tell, in detail, how signing on to the Republican campaign to destroy Social Security is “symbolic”.

Cranky

2010 was NOT decided by the broad Dem-leaning populace staying home because the economy/their lives had not improved enough. Dem-leaning moderates did stay home above 2006 levels, but not enough to throw the House to the Republicans.

2010 was decided by the Republicans managing presidential election turnout levels in a mid-term election. Turn-out by conservative Republicans in particular was above 2008 levels.

2010 was not the fault of the professional left. It was not even the fault of the Obama administration or the congressional Blue Dogs or Senate Dems disastrous decision to not change the filibuster rules in 2009 (the main driver of the legislative failures of 2009-2010, consider all the legislation that passed the House and then died in the Senate). It was a positive success of the Republican turnout machine.

If the Republican turnout machine figured out how to get presidential turnout in a midterm election, that is one thing, but if they managed to figure out how to boost turn-out by 10% period, we are well and truly fucked.

Shorter Michael: “it’s okay to be upset with the Democrats, but please, don’t do anything about it! Even the mildest form of disapproval (primary opponent) could let the devil incarnate in!”

So since primaries, third parties, staying home, and spending your activist time on anything but working to get Democrats elected no matter what are apparently illegitimate in the face of supreme evil, how do Michael and those who share his view suggest those on the left go about getting anything done? Emigration?

Adding onto Charles S, what decided 2010 was that the economy still s*cked the big one, and Obama was not putting the onus on the GOP.

Mark Twain had the right idea about American politics; after that it’s all downhill.

So assassinating US citizens abroad is symbolic? Imprisoning without trial is symbolic? If “symbolism”, mere or otherwise, is to mean anything, there have to be some things that cannot be considered purely symbolic, and if the manufacture of stinking corpses or the placing of men into cages do not qualify, nothing does. This is certainly not, for me, something I care about because it represents something else – I’m not even sure what that something else would be. It is true that I look to the longer-run consequences of these practices and precedents, but that is not symbolism, it’s prediction, and prediction is always uncertain, but is still concerned with something real is a quite narrow sense, and is unavoidable in evaluating political policies of any sort.

Can you really call something symbolic because it has no significant political constituency? 50 years ago, there was no constituency for gay rights. Does that mean gay desires to stop being beaten and imprisoned were “symbolic” issues. “Mere” does not matter, although it is hard to see how one applies “symbolic” to such a thing without implying “mere”.

“Still, yeah, I wish I had that one back. I voted for Barry Commoner thinking there was no way Carter could lose New York.”

Reagan did in fact carry New York in that election, and if you had voted for Carter instead of Commoner, Reagan still would have carried New York.

Or are you concerned that your constant advocacy of voting for Commoner convinced so many people who otherwise would have voted for Carter to vote for Commoner, costing Carter’s New York electoral votes? I haven’t checked the vote totals for 1980, but I strongly suspect this didn’t happen.

Carter in fact would have lost the election even if he had carried New York. There were in fact three presidential elections where New York’s electoral votes going to the other candidate deprived the Democrat of victory, in 1848, 1880, and in 1888. In at least one of them a minor party candidate was a factor.

Are you sure you understand American electoral politics?

So now if the Democrats didn’t promise anything we should (a) still vote for them and (b) not be upset they didn’t deliver any progressive change either – after all they didn’t promise to. Am I getting that right? Also, Michael apparently won’t make any suggestions about how progressives should go about pushing for their policies. It’s just another drive-by lefty blaming. Now he didn’t promise otherwise but somehow I’m still disappointed.

Commoner received 23,000 votes in NY in 1980. Reagan’s lead over Carter was 160,000.

I find that when I argue with the voices in my head, I usually win. I see that other people enjoy that pastime, too. I bet I can make those people even angrier if I say for a third time that lefty disappointment is real and well-earned.

Chuckle. Don’t you just love it when they double down on the stupid?

But thanks for letting us all know that yes, you were deliberately trying to be provocative.

>> Cranky, you seem very cranky. You know, reading comprehension
>> can be your friend. But only if you let it.

Well, I _am_ cranky without a doubt! And the Modest Proposal aspect of your post did go over my head on first reading. But the problem is that your 12 steps are exactly what the extreme Obama apologists offer as their analysis, so it is hard to separate fact from satire.

Cranky

Jesus H. On A Hanging Chad:

Perhaps if Michael B could recuse himself and let Todd Gitlin circa 1999 take his place hereafter. 1/2 of the commenters here apparently would like a word with him.

…as for electoral advise: primary local dem’s in uncontested seats while voting against any possible chance of republican victory. Yes the center right Dem’s have progressives by the short and curlies. Why are lefties of all people engaging in a debate which assumes the necessity of top-down politics?

I’m a little confused — after each cycle, the whole of American politics moves three steps to the right, yet the next Dem president always turns out to be “a liberal-centrist fellow”?

Charles S – agree with your assessment:
I am not completely sure on exact results stats, but arent mid-term elections typically favored towards the non-incumbent party anyway? So, other than the “Tea Party” factor which are basically habitually non-voting far-right libertarians, how are the results any different then 2006, 2002, 1998, etc., etc.? It seems any notion from the far-left or the right in general to sell 2010 as anything other then electoral business as usual, is consensus-building for 2012.

So, I wouldnt say that the Republican messaging machine managed to get a 10% boost in base, although like I say, that Tea Party effect will be anything close to creating those numbers. Its why no one in the news will speak the Republican candidate who shall not be named (Paul) but LOVE talking about his voters, because they wouldnt be showing up at the polls as usual, otherwise. Its also why there are so many choices in the early Republican field; its not because any of them actually want to be the executor, but because they want to keep the broadest base possible riled till next year which means there wont be mass names dropping out until well into the cycle no matter how debt-ridden their campaigns become.

But the thing is, as I see it, the Tea Party folks are basically a counter-rupture to the 2008 rupture of habitual non-voters from the left who were either first-time voters (the young) or non-voters (mostly racial minorities and lefty third partiers). For 2012, you can probably count off a fair number of the young which were not a huge group anyway (even considering 2012 first-time voters as well as the 2008 first-timers) so the question is can Obama bring back the habitual non-voters of 2008. That will be the key question depending on how batshit the Republican candidate (or their vice) are framed at that time.

This post reminds me of Lasch’s Agony of the American Left.

But the thing is, as I see it, the Tea Party folks are basically a counter-rupture to the 2008 rupture of habitual non-voters from the left who were either first-time voters (the young) or non-voters (mostly racial minorities and lefty third partiers).

That’s plenty intuitive. Obama’s Team acts as if they think elections are about “independents”. Why their neglect of base turnout?

Bankers, I’m thinking.

b9n10nt
I think its more Obama believes the public and even the political power structure will be better served by bipartisanship then unilateralism. I think he sees himself as a practical politician who is trying to mend fences between parties rather then pleasing constituents (although within the confines of the executive he is doing what he can to do that, whether they recognize it or even know it). So its a miscalculation according to the twelve step program above and referenced by the notion that Obama is basically a Rockefeller Republican (commented above) even if it may be the right thing to do….

I dont see it as Obama trying to please bankers by any means, even the attempt of Dodd-Frank let alone what actually made it through suggests otherwise. The Fed is pretty much beyond his control but even then QE3 is probably more of a carrot then a reality. So if he is trying to please bankers in any demonstrable way, its merely to get an economy started to a level he can claim success come next November rather than a stagflation repeat or the new buzzword double dip.

I am also amazed to see that Berube’s always enjoyable talent for invective seem to have utterly deserted him on this thread.

I am not completely sure on exact results stats, but arent mid-term elections typically favored towards the non-incumbent party anyway? So, other than the “Tea Party” factor which are basically habitually non-voting far-right libertarians, how are the results any different then 2006, 2002, 1998, etc., etc.? It seems any notion from the far-left or the right in general to sell 2010 as anything other then electoral business as usual, is consensus-building for 2012.

So, you’re “not sure” about the actual data, but you’re going to go ahead and give an opinion based upon your prejudices, eh? Sigh. There’s this thing called “Google” you might want to acquaint yourself with:

The Republican Party gained 63 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, recapturing the majority, and making it the largest seat change since 1948 and the largest for any midterm election since the 1938 midterm elections.

That’s from the wiki. The article goes on further to say:

Political analysts in October 2010 predicted sweeping Republican gains this election, but despite a reported “enthusiasm gap” between likely Republican and Democratic voters,[6] turnout increased relative to the last U.S. midterm elections without any significant shift in voters’ political identification.[7] The swaying views of self-declared independent voters, however, were largely responsible for the shift from Democratic to Republican gains.[8]

Never give an opinion without trying to get a handle on the facts first, son. And it’s not like there’s a paucity of analysis out there:

Independent voters, white working-class voters, seniors, and men broke heavily against the Democrats due to the economy. Turnout levels were also unusually low among young and minority voters and unusually high among seniors, whites, and conservatives, thus contributing to a massively skewed midterm electorate. The Democrats therefore faced a predictable, and arguably unavoidable, convergence of forces. Incumbent Democrats suffered a genuine backlash of voter discontent due to a weak economy with considerable concerns about job creation, deep skepticism among independents, poor turnout among key base groups, and strong enthusiasm among energized conservatives.

The 62-to-64-seat loss in the House and reduction of the Senate majority is a serious rebuke to the Democrats and the political status quo but this was not an endorsement of a conservative agenda. Data on voter opinions expressed in pre- and post-election polling confirms that the 2010 election was neither a mandate for antigovernment and Tea Party ideology, nor an endorsement of GOP policies on taxes and regulations. And the election did not turn on a repudiation of President Barack Obama’s health care plan despite staunch GOP opposition.

Is that good enough for you? Or would you like something else? As I’ve said four or five times now, this was easily predicable (I’m on record for making this prediction . . . in January of 2010) and in fact hundreds or thousands of people did the same as well.

So please. No more of this “this wasn’t an unusual election result” or “who coulda known” or whatever. The facts are what they are – and they are easily researched and searchable facts at that.

David

Berube says

“symbolic does not equal trivial”

weaver:

Berube says left’s alienation well earned (Obama sells out left wing)

Dudes, read the thread, or read the OP carefully. This is Crooked Fucking Timber :)

It should always be remembered that liberals who tell leftists to vote strategically won’t themselves be doing so. Voting Democratic for them is not lesser-of-two-evils stuff; they’ll be voting for a party the policies of which they agree with. The rest is a grift.

With suitable modification of the word “liberal”, eggsaktly.

Funny isn’t it, how voting quid pro quo is totally unremarkable . . . except when “leftists” (who are more often than not better served by the label populists) do it, at which point they’re exhorted to vote like “grownups”, i.e., like their political betters tell them to.

What it comes down to is a power struggle. Nothing more. But nothing less.

Ouch, indeed!

ScentOfViolets
I am reminded of the statement “a person can build a wall of facts between themselves and anything real.” The data you provided doesnt show much to me beyond commentary, no different than mine (other than voter turnout being greater than 2006). If the info you cite without any source, at that, is accurate it only makes sense but doesnt explain anything beyond Republicans won handily.

As I stated, it was basically the pendulum swing from 2006/2008. Republicans and far-right non-voters who are basically Tea Party folks (not being a defined movement by design its hard to say what a Tea Party member would even be, but as I say, its generally far-right libertarians who would not self-identify as Tea Party) aghast at the outcome of 2008 were activated in droves by conditions themselves (and a well-oiled propaganda machine as always) while disaffected voters from 2008 on the left stayed home. Most folks saw it coming, you are not the only one, but again, how is it different than any other mid-term other than as you say there were more seats picked up than ’48 (which again only makes sense if enough key districts had an activated base on the right and a disaffected one on the left) and higher voter turnout than 2006.

Your desperation in citing all these sources as being a right-wing tide cresting once again only reaffirms my statement that you are consensus-building (or in the case of this site, trying to, whats the term, tamp down hope).

Retract the statement on sources mostly, I see you state the first part is from wikipedia. Certainly read that before posting, but I am talking about demographic election results data or something a little beyond wiki’ed blurbs. You did not source the commentary quotes, though.

Obviously I am giving my opinion which I dont just create out of thin air but from my own sources which I do not feel compelled to cite as you did and instead merely add the basic disclaimer IANAW(onk) which apparently you are….

Speaking of symbolic matters, it seems to me that voting for a candidate who has deliberately and knowingly killed numerous innocent people, or assisted in the killing, makes one a symbolic, although not an effective, accomplice to murder. That is, it has moral although not practical force — one might say selling one’s birthright for not a mess of pottage but the illusion of one.

dudes, berube has punked 2 out of 3 commentors here. always read berube w/a grain of salt towards his narrative voice, if not his salient points. someone above referenced “a modest proposal.” most everything berube writes is a modest proposal.

I know. We agree it sucks.

If the info you cite without any source, at that, is accurate it only makes sense but doesnt explain anything beyond Republicans won handily.

Sigh. Use the Google. Highlight any bits I’ve quoted and put them into the query.

It’s really not that hard ;-)

As for the rest, no, you didn’t give any facts, merely an opinion. No, I am not a “liberal”. And finally, what happened in the 2011 (contrary to your spin) is exactly what people have been telling you. In fact, what people like me predicted.

Let’s see your predictions for the 2010 elections, as opposed to your Monday morning quarterbacking. What? You don’t have any that you want to share? Thought not.

I’m guessing your one of those people wedded to narrative as opposed to the type that likes evidence, testable predictions, that sort of thing.

So later. Unless you want to get down off that horse of yours and allow as maybe you were wrong about a thing or two there. Otherwise, what’s the point in speaking to a ‘bot?

Obviously I am giving my opinion which I dont just create out of thin air but from my own sources which I do not feel compelled to cite as you did and instead merely add the basic disclaimer IANAW which apparently you are….

Next time, I suggest you read the material your commenting on before posting. The other bit, well, what did you say:

I am not completely sure on exact results stats, but arent mid-term elections typically favored towards the non-incumbent party anyway? So, other than the “Tea Party” factor which are basically habitually non-voting far-right libertarians, how are the results any different then 2006, 2002, 1998, etc., etc.?

If you don’t know something that was widely aired at the time – among other things, that relentless 24/7 pounding on the fact that this was the biggest upset in more than fifty years – and then you go ahead and give your opinion anyway without doing any research, expect to get a few raspberries.

Really, this sort of laziness might have been excusable even twenty years ago, when you’d have to go to a physical library for information. But not now. Not when you have tools like Google that can run down any of a number of good references in seconds. And no – to forestall the usual whining – this isn’t something that could only be expected of some professional researcher; this is your basic think before you start talking through your hat.

Amazing how many people just don’t get Bérubé, even after reading him for years.
Of course, this post was designed to push the buttons it’s pushing. As a non-American, I’m missing a fair bit, but thanks anyway. (MB: “You are welcome.”)

SoV@ 65- take your loathsome gender-policing 3rd-grade sexist bullshit somewhere else, please.

CWhitehead,

For a really good analysis of the 2010 election and of the nature of the increased turnout, I highly recommend this Pew report (for 2010, the key graph is mid-way down page 3).

There was also a Daily Kos thread a while back that looked at comparing exit polls from 2006 and 2010 that was really useful.

The increased turnout was similar (+5 relative to 2008!) across the 3 main Republican sub-categories (fundies, libertarians, and rich people).

Chris: That is nonsensical – Imperial stature has fuckall to do with the quality of life for your citizens. The UK crashed from being the unquestioned world hegemon to “Typical european country” and proceeded to enjoy decades of rising prosperity and equality. If anything, the way excessive military spending the US is engaging in to keep the strategic edge on third world shitholes of no particular importance is a millstone around the neck of the country.

Thomas: I respectfully suggest that relative economic strength has quite a lot to do both with global dominance and how well-off people are back home. In addition, I’d note that whilst being a “typical European country” might have been a sensible option for the UK, we too have overspent significantly in order to retain a capacity to project power overseas – a big millstone around the neck of the UK.

You’re right of course that the US could give up its military power AND improve the life of its citizens by making sensible policy choices (reining in the super-rich etc). But that’s not going to happen given the political setup there. Given that things will remain massively dysfunctional domestically, and presidents won’t be able to anything to fix that, there’s the further point that they’ll try to bolster their stature by acting in the only arena where they have discretion: ie by chucking their weight about militarily. (Which of course needs a military, which has to be paid for, by taxes that can’t be levied on the rich … etc etc)

All downhill from here.

Relatedly: John Gray on Friedman and Mandelbaum

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/059dda68-d30f-11e0-9aae-00144feab49a.html

I notice that in this program, the Republicans don’t figure. That is, there will never ever be a Rockerfeller wing to the Republican party again. Ike is dead, and all that.
Which I imagine means that American politics shifts continually right. In the twentieth century, conservatives had no problem voting Democratic, in the South, and creating a very rightwing faction in the Dem party. Southern liberals, now, are encouraged to stick with the Dems and never try the policy of moderating the Republican party in the South.
Longterm, it is easy to see that this has led, and will lead, to disaster. It is also odd, as the Republican party in the South contains a lot of working class whites who are very amenable to certain liberal economic policies, are violently opposed to, for instance, catering to the financial services industry, would be happy with an industrial policy formed on patriotic grounds, etc., etc.
I’d suggest the problem with the 12 step program goes back to step one. Instead of: Republican administration messes things up, it is more like: “Republican administration meets a feckless opposition in the Democratic part of the legislature that is ruled by Daschle-ism – too crooked to oppose any of the economic “reforms” put in by the Rep administration., is too cowardly to oppose obviously insane aggressiveness on the part of the Rep. administration” and so has the leisure and pleasure of messing things up. Dems mount in numbers in the Senate and House, on calls that they do something, and then sternly remind supporters that there are parliamentary procedures, handed down on Mt. Sinai by Jesus Christ and Helen Keller, which would make it irresponsible to do anything – but look! there’s social security! Liberals ignore evidence that this is exactly how Democrats act, elect Democrat president, and watch in amazement as this is exactly how Democrats act.

This article in Salon might provide some context:

‘Obama has ruined the Democratic Party. The 2010 wipeout was an electoral catastrophe so bad you’d have to go back to 1894 to find comparable losses. From 2008 to 2010, according to Gallup, the fastest growing demographic party label was former Democrat. Obama took over the party in 2008 with 36 percent of Americans considering themselves Democrats. Within just two years, that number had dropped to 31 percent, which tied a 22-year low….If would be one thing if Obama were failing because he was too close to party orthodoxy. Yet his failures have come precisely because Obama has not listened to Democratic Party voters. He continued idiotic wars, bailed out banks, ignored luminaries like Paul Krugman, and generally did whatever he could to repudiate the New Deal. The Democratic Party should be the party of pay raises and homes, but under Obama it has become the party of pay cuts and foreclosures. Getting rid of Obama as the head of the party is the first step in reverting to form.’

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/09/04/favoritesonsanddaughters

Kaveh, that’s been tried, and really the idea that everyone should put on their game faces and organize the local level one more time is not very different than the idea that we should try a third party again. (Which your last sentence also buys into.) I’ve written about this here, for instance, in a post that mentions what happened to the netroots and Stephanie Herseth. People organized, and then they discovered that once their local candidates went non-local, the two-party system mathematically implied by our system meant that there was no way to discipline those candidates. Hey, Obama was a community organizer once upon a time. Did that help?

Really, The people who deserve blame when Presidents don’t get reelected aren’t voters, they are the people working on reelection campaigns, staffing the whitehouse, and sitting in the oval office. Articles like this have never been about thoughtful analysis. they have never been about helping Obama win or making an argument about why anyone should vote for him. They are only ever about one thing: Making sure that nobody ever listens to those dirty, filthy hippies, even if they’re right, because that would result in some small amount of lost power for the Democratic elite.

Even now, when you’re about to lose the whole enchilada, you are far more concerned with the notion that someone might take a left-wing critique seriously than you are about attempting to discredit the right-wing ideas that are about to become dominant.

Even if you somehow managed to brow-beat every last leftist in this country to support Obama, he would still lose the 2012 election because Independents only vote on the economy and they hold the balance of power. That’s why I know all of these ‘blame the left’ arguments are BS. You know full well that we aren’t the ones who will decided whether Obama wins or not.

Business Cycle

I’m a little confused—after each cycle, the whole of American politics moves three steps to the right, yet the next Dem president always turns out to be “a liberal-centrist fellow”?

Relative to where the center has moved, yes.

Democrat does not equal “liberal, left” or “conservative, right.” American electoral politics works by identifying a constituency unhappy with candidate “A” and then driving a wedge between that candidate and this constituency. One example of this occurred when a political up and comer “mistakenly” recruited a “reformed homo-sexual” recording artist and avowed Christian to MC a fund-raiser in a community that lo and behold espoused Christianity and viewed homosexuality as a sin. This conservative constituency flocked to the up and comer and continues to vote Dem and oppose gay marriage. There’s an awful lot wrong with most democratic systems. The US model is no exception. But it beats not being able to vote.

The election campaigns over the next year are likely to make 2008 appear a model of civility. If your issue is registering breast implants, the choice could not be more clear.

Dems screwed this up bad. They tried to knock it out of the park with HCR and ended up reviving the zombie corpse of the Republicans. I preferred anyone to O, including McCain. Dems controlled the entire apparatus for all but the last 8 months. But none of the current disaster is their fault. Excellent!

Republican president wipes out previous Democratic president’s modest gains and accomplishments, which are belatedly acknowledged and viewed in nostalgic retrospect by Democratic voters appalled by Republican president

I’m confused by this part. I’ve seen lefties express some retrospective nostalgia for the Big Dawg’s political savvy, but “gains and accomplishments”? I’m having a hard time coming up with any. At least not insofar as those terms refer to concrete improvements, as opposed to “things the Republicans would have fucked up even worse.”

What this 12-step summary leaves out is that some of the most important factors in an election are not political, and can’t necessarily be controlled politically. And these apolitical factors do not arise in neatly defined 4 year increments.

Stagflation, among other things, got Reagan elected in 1980. The results both of the deregulation begun under Carter and of the Fed’s successful slaying of inflation (also begun during Carter’s term) led to Reagan’s re-election in 1984.

The early 90s recession that ended just too late for Bush, and the growth that started just in time for Clinton, caused Clinton to win reelection in 1996.

Financial deregulation and changes in mortgage lending practices begun during Clinton’s term, and continued in Bush’s, eventually led to the financial crisis and recession – which pushed Obama to victory, but may also push him out in 2012.

Overall, I see a much more gradual ebb and flow of American policies – and much smaller impact from the decisions and moods of various party factions.

Well from time to time Michael writes posts like this. It’s a three-step process:

1. Write post designed to provoke some class of people, employing very clever double-secret irony.

2. Class of people is duly provoked. Michael points out they are StupidandVirulent unable to grasp his brilliant double-secret irony.

3. Michael’s vast intellectual superiority is once again confirmed.

Yep. Pure trolling in other words. The icing on the cake is that Michael doesn’t realize (or pretends not to realize) that pointing out the stupidities of his little bon mots is not being “angered” or “provoked”[1]. They are pointing out the stupidities in a poorly executed piece. Judging by his content, Michael – as most people already know – is really rather a dull sort. He doesn’t realize (or pretends not to realize) that for this shtick to be carried off, it has to be executed with some degree of competency. “A Modest Proposal” his stuff ain’t. In fact, it’s poorly executed and gives every appearance of being dashed off in a matter of minutes with no attempt at editing and no thought given to voice, tone, or any of a number of technical details.

[1]Again, typical troll behaviour, as most of us know all too well.

I find most of MB’s parodic news articles, for example, very nicely turned: this piece, on the other hand, does suffer from insufficient attention to tone, and from a certain pointlessness: it has the trappings of satire, but it’s not really clear who/what the target is; it seems both rueful and accusatory.

Michael, if I could ask: granted that certain folks may be misreading you and imputing a hostility to the left that you don’t actually hold–isn’t it true that the only Democrats who DO SOMETHING WRONG, in your analysis, are the “portion of the left wing” you characterize in #6? Would it not be fair for a reader, then, to assume said Democrats were the primary target of your criticism?

Also: taking the piece as an analysis, the problem is that a phrase like “post-Watergate” tells you that a certain kind of analysis that focuses exclusively on electoral politics is coming: , eg, with respect to the changing relationship of the two parties to capital, “post-Watergate” is irrelevant. Is that relationship really the same in 1980 as it is in 2010? But you know this, obviously, so…..

I’t’s David, Berube. Purely symbolic, of course.

I think I’ll start a campaign to draft Michael’s ego for president

I see it as a kind of separate, gigantic entity, a bit like the planet in Solaris only less broody. (But more brilliant, obviously.)

@107 — TR, FDR, and LBJ didn’t actually do those things by themselves. They had working majorities in Congress.

b9, 119: excuses, excuses.

Bush 2 gets in at the beginning of a recession, and getting fewer votes than the other guy. Immediately, he pushes through a huge tax cut, top income bracket, cap gains, estate tax, the whole nine yards. How does that fit into your theory? Now, he could, of course, lose the re-election campaign, but so what: either way his constituency would benefit, to the tune of a couple of trillion dollars. That’s what competent politics looks like.

Henri,

I think you mean “explanations, explanations”

I think Bush got a fair number of Dem’s to support the Bush’s tax cuts, no? The Medicare Part D was also bipartisan. As was the foreign policy debacle. As was No Child Left Without a Scantron. When Bush fully came out with a no-doubt right wing policy with no cover from Dem’s (Social Security privatization) it died. Quickly.

Now, what Bush did do well was sneak in staunch right-wing policy that independents could like (or be told to like). But hegemony and $$$ gave Bush far greater room to maneuver here than it does Obama. Tax cuts play better in Peoria than infrastructure spending. “Govt is wasteful” is hegemonic; “capitalism sucks” isn’t.

Maybe I’m wrong. Show me. But if I’m right, then these aren’t excuses. I’m trying to be descriptive.

I see it a little differently. In the long term I think the left has already won the welfare state, and we are seeing the long death-throes of the dinosaur Republican Party. My basic premise is that the welfare state is here to stay, and that all the Republican effrontery is to get power, not to end Medicare. Obama’s embodiment of the center has him running more popular than Congressional Republicans, and that is nice, but it is not enough. On the other hand, Perry’s move toward the center will be difficult because of things he has already said, (a task which eastern seaboard Republicans appear to be happy to point out, the Washington Post for example). Perry has already made strong statements against Social Security, so he needs to start to spin it as changing the terms for the future recipients only, by setting up a different system for the youngest workers. It’s absolute nonsense of course, and it would cost a lot more than business as usual — in attempted privatisation-putsch under Dubya, this was called the “transition cost”: at least $5-6 trillion more over 10 years, and ongoing afterward. Here is a refresher course: http://www.youtube.com/user/leearnold#p/c/8AC650E4705BC0D1/1/Tts2uTWt6e8

Exactly the point I meant to make last night when some posters were citing Obama’s historical loss of Dem-affiliated voters.

Oh really? Do tell. Especially when you go on to say things like this:

Maybe I’m wrong. Show me. But if I’m right, then these aren’t excuses. I’m trying to be descriptive.

Me and mine predicted how the election in 2010 would go in terms of certain voting blocks and why. You’re giving an after-the-fact Monday morning quarterback analysis that conveniently support your beliefs.

Ergo, what I say trumps what you say. Unless you can provide a quote where you made a such a prediction as well.

Do you have such a quote? Or is this yet another instance where Narrative is supposed to trump Scientific Method?

No, until you can convince me otherwise ;-) it seems pretty obvious that Obama frittered away any electoral advantage he may have had by not coming through for people on his election promises.

It really is just that simple for most people.

Scent:

from the Pew Typology report cited up thread:

Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election by solidifying the backing of not only the Solid Liberal and Hard-Pressed Democratic groups, but also by activating and appealing to New Coalition Democrats and Post-Moderns. Fully 87% of Obama’s votes came from these four key coalition sources, though he attracted a respectable 13% of his overall vote total by reaching out to Disaffecteds, Libertarians and Main Street Republicans as well. (Obama won virtually no support from Staunch Conservatives.)…

…The 2010 midterms revealed the fragility of this electoral base. While both Solid Liberals and Hard-Pressed Democrats remained solidly behind Democratic congressional candidates in 2010, support slipped substantially among New Coalition Democrats and Post-Moderns – not because Republicans made overwhelming gains in these groups, but because their turnout dropped so substantially. Where two-thirds of New Coalition Democrats came out to vote for Obama in 2008, just 50% came out to back Democrats in 2010. The drop-off in the Democratic vote was even more severe among Post-Moderns, 65% of whom backed Obama, but just 43% of whom came to the polls for Democrats in 2010.

So the drop off in turn out was NOT among “hard-pressed democrats” and “solid liberals”. It was among the centrists.

from the dkos link from Charles S @ 86 last night:

Once again, liberals made up 20% of the electorate, but only voted 87% for Democrats. Between 2006 and 2010, liberals made up the same proportion of the electorate, and yet actually voted even more strongly Democratic in 2010 than their historical norm. This is remarkable given that 2006 was actually a Democratic wave, and 2010 a Republican one – and 2010 actually had higher overall turnout, 41% versus 36% in 2006. It’s not even that the same liberals from 2006 showed up, but in fact some new ones came out too. But they weren’t enough.

So we agree that the left didn’t leave Obama over neglected election promises. It doesn’t seem obvious that the center left and center right left Obama over election promises seeing as:

1) it was the economy

2) these centrists are the least informed about election promises and are the least ideologically invested in seeing them fulfilled (see the Pew Typology report) and

3) see 1).

So, a smell of your own Scent:

You claim independents left Obama over broken election promises. There’s I’ll-call-it prima facie evidence against this interpretation. Care to counter with any evidence? Or will you play the game of “you can’t force me to prove myself wrong so I win”? (I realize you have a more elegant formulation but it escapes me at the moment.)

“And everyone, I’m so sorry I forgot to tell you what the left needs to do now. But I have discovered a most marvelous formula, which the margin of this blog is too small to contain.”

Let L equal the set of P(x,y,z) in R cubed such that: x = sin t, y = cos t, z + 1 = t/pi and 0 is less than or equal to t which is less than 2 pi. Label z sub 1 = (0, 1, -1) as communist, z sub 2 = (1, 0, 1/2) as liberal, z sub 3 = (0, -1, 0) as centrist, z sub 4 = (-1, 0, 1/2) as conservative and z sub 5 = (0, 1, 1) as fascist, and you’ve got a (normalized) graph of political progress which winds around from z sub 1 to z sub 5 and crashes back to z sub 1 again in an infinite loop of axial oscillation.

Michael, Michael, Michael: You go badly, badly off the rails with Step #4, “Democratic president gives in to Republicans repeatedly on a handful of symbolic (and therefore important to politically active voters) issues, appointments, regulations, etc.”

Tax cuts for the rich?
Social Security?
Medicare?
Medicaid?
Health insurance?
Wars?
Hello?

Those are hardly symbolic issues of interest only to activists.

But, hey, you seem like a fine fellow (despite your tin ear for policy and politics) and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Nate Silver on Friday, nytimes 538 blog:

The relationship between Mr. Obama’s approval ratings and the economic performance of each state has been either neutral or somewhat inversely correlated.

and:

Based on the evidence from the state level, it’s not entirely clear that “hard” economic data, like the high unemployment rate or the slow growth in income, is driving the decline in his approval rating.

So there’s some more evidence against the idea that R’s gains in 2010 were the result of economically distressed voters sick of Obama’s breaking election promises.

Btw, Let’s go back to b9’s own quote:

Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election by solidifying the backing of not only the Solid Liberal and Hard-Pressed Democratic groups, but also by activating and appealing to New Coalition Democrats and Post-Moderns. Fully 87% of Obama’s votes came from these four key coalition sources, though he attracted a respectable 13% of his overall vote total by reaching out to Disaffecteds, Libertarians and Main Street Republicans as well. (Obama won virtually no support from Staunch Conservatives.)

Kind of proves my point, no? And of course, we now know in fact that b9 did not make a prediction about the 2010 elections, though he feels free to chatter on after the fact. Stick a fork in him.

Kind of proves my point, no?

You’d have to show that disaffecteds, libertarians, and Main Street Republicans were looking for Obama to get them out from underwater on their mortgages, stick it to the bankers, etc… The Pew description of these groups, however, strongly suggests they are NOT economic populists.

Scent,

I was attempting lighthearted kidding. Genuinely sorry for improperly impugning your chops on this blog and my poor attempts at expressing myself. I am also genuinely a fan of your posts here on CT.

What evidence do you have that shows Obama has lost support because of his breaking of campaign promises?

CharleyCarp @120:
True, but I think the point re CB’s somewhat restricted view of what a president can do stands.

I think Scent would read something like this as confirming evidence:

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2010/11/election_analysis.html

What motivated the swing toward the GOP?

More voters (35 percent) blamed Wall Street for today’s economic problems rather than President Bush (29 percent) or President Obama (24 percent). But these Wall-Street-blaming voters supported Republicans by 57 percent to 41 percent. The Obama administration’s association with bailing out Wall Street bankers, who are heavily blamed for the bad economy, apparently had a negative effect on Democratic performance in this election.

But the author is letting “apparently” do a lot of work here. There’s a lot of distance between “blaming wall st” and centrist voters (who tend to support safety net programs but otherwise are pro-business and skeptical of government involvement in the economy) wanting Obama to nationalize banks, force a restructuring of mortgages, more forcefully stimulate the economy, etc…

It still boils down to exactly why I, as a longtime progressive and now farther than ever left of the so-called center, should give a flying fuck whether or not Obama is reelected. I don’t. His reelection would scarcely be less disastrous for the country than electing someone who doesn’t hesitate to call him or herself a Republican. Nothing Berube, b9n10nt or anyone else has said has come remotely close to making the case that it would. Symbolically or otherwise.

Why not make it easier for everyone to vote. The hurdles one has to take before one can vote are unbelievable. I makes me question the level of democracy.

Professor Berube is one of my heroes, and as Hemingway said, at my age they are hard to find but “sort of necessary.”

I have four of his books, and I’m biased, yet he probably does more to further social justice and promote progressive issues than a thousand like me. I dream of being as smart and effective as Berube.

I’m a little saddened by this commentary. While we are arguing over the meaning of the word “symbolic,” corporatists are sitting in smoke filled rooms sipping $1000 wines figuring out how to kill health care and end social security checks for little old people who worked half a century to grow those wine stocks, build those hardwood rooms, and fill the pockets of their soft linen suits with gold.

I’m heartened that we can even have this conversation, because it wouldn’t be tolerated on a right wing blog (and I follow a few of them in the vain attempt to understand what to me is an utterly alien world view), but really, we make all of Berube’s points for him in everything we’ve said here.

Obvious liberal is obvious. Anje Yonker, that is a truly widespread misconception. The US is not a true national democracy. It is a Democratic republic and always has been, hence the Democrats and Republicans. If you’d like to see a true democracy in action take a look at Sweden’s slow-as-molasses and can’t-even-agree-on-if-we-disagree model. I hear its super effective, hence their prominence in global policy decisions. Everyone knows the Swedes are the real power house on the security counsel.

The new party just might work this time, with the Republicans self-destructing. I don’t see how the Republicans can hold it together, with their Tea Party and Wall Street factions in conflict.

Sorry, but people have been saying this about the GOP since at least the early 1980s, when the “social” and “fiscal” conservatives were supposed to start squabbling with each other any minute. Never happened.

The Wall Street Wing and the Tea Party will get along just fine, not least because the Wall Street Wing will be willing to concede all by their core economic issues to the ‘baggers.

You can certainly argue with Bérubé’s details, but he’s 100% correct about the lather-rinse-repeat aspect of recent US politics. In the short run, I agree that the least bad option is supporting the lesser evil. In the long run, all that gets us is more of the same, steady descent to the right. What’s most depressing about these threads is how familiar all the arguments on all sides are. In fact, both the hold-your-nose-and-vote-Dem crowd (in which I reluctantly count myself this time around) and the heighten-the-contradictions-until-something-actually-good-shows-up faction (where I’ve been in the past) have long records of failure. Surely there must be some less pre-discredited take on how to address our political situation!

I’m so sorry I forgot to tell you what the left needs to do now

Someone a couple of months back — was it Steve Attewell? — made a strong argument here that what the left needs to do is what the right did so well: contest local and state elections on a large scale, build up strength within the Democratic Party by holding local and state offices, and build up strength outside the Democratic Party by forming issue-based organizations that need to be courted for their support. Sounds simple, and requires a lot of money and boots on the ground, but what’s the alternative?

@157 and @158: Yes to both these suggestions. The problem is how you organize such movements. Because, though all the strategies you suggest involve a lot of individual activism, they only really pay off if they’re organized. I can (and have) gotten involved in local politics. I can (and have) taken part in countless issue-based organizations and demonstrations. And though I don’t think I’ve wasted my time on either, none has remotely improved the Democratic Party. What’s missing from b9n10nt, geo, and Steve Attewell’s perfectly sensible suggestions is any sense of what the vehicle would be that would convert a lot of individual good intentions and efforts (and more potential individual good intentions and efforts) into a coordinated and effective effort to change the Democratic Party. Without such coordination, the notion that my individual efforts to, e.g, change local politics or protest cuts in Social Security would in any way change the Democratic Party is as much a fantasy as the hope that Obama would govern as a left-liberal.

@161
Let’s recognize that what’s wrong with the Democratic Party is the top.

Irving Kristol back in 1980 provided a more convincing account of US politics:

When in office the liberals (or social-democrats, as they should more properly be called) will always spend generously, regardless of budgetary considerations, until the public permits the conservatives an interregnum in which to clean up the mess — but with the liberals resuming their status as the activist party, the party of the “natural majority.” The neo-conservatives have decided that two can play at this game — and must, since it is the only game in town … And what if the traditionalist conservatives are right and a Kemp-Roth tax cut, without corresponding cuts in expenditures, also leaves us with a fiscal problem? The neo-conservative is willing to leave those problems to be coped with by liberal interregnums. He wants to shape the future, and will leave it up to his opponents to tidy up afterwards.

Good analysis: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/03/23/dick_cheney_was_right_about_deficits

The people who are saying that we should organize the local level one more time would benefit by looking at the recent failures to do just that. Quoting Ben Alpers:

“In fact, both the hold-your-nose-and-vote-Dem crowd (in which I reluctantly count myself this time around) and the heighten-the-contradictions-until-something-actually-good-shows-up faction (where I’ve been in the past) have long records of failure. ”

The organize-locally crowd is yet another perennial. But more damagingly, I don’t think that any of these really qualify as “crowds”. Individual left-of-center people try a third party, supporting the Dems, taking over the Dems through local organization, and heightening the contradictions in turn, meanwhile telling other people who are at a different part of the same cycle that they should try whatever their current focus is. If there were distinct crowds, they could negotiate with each other and try to cooperate. But there are just desperate individuals trying different things with more or less experience.

None of these things will work because the system does not work. Nor will heightening the contradictions take it down. It may well die from natural causes and/or imperial overstretch. But if it does, nothing that we do will make much of a difference.

Nor, for that matter, did the Tea Party take over the GOP by organizing locally. The people who say this are just unfamiliar with how much of the Tea Party was created by corporate interests. Nixon’s Southern Strategy bears no relationship to what a left-of-center person thinks of as “organizing locally”, and what the GOP has none has nothing to do with what we can do.

@164 — We are entering a new era. Leaving fiscal problems to be coped with by liberal interregnums only works UNTIL the rest of the polity understands the strategy. Because by providing more spending too, neo-conservatives are building the welfare state too. And they, too, have to look Granny in the eye and deny her. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise. Yeah, that ought to work! The Repubs are the party of King Lear.

@165:

The organizing has to be independent of the Democratic party if it wants to have any chance to influence it (as a bonus it may pay off in some way even if it doesn’t succeed in creating such change). That’s my fundamental problem with the lesser evil approach – the way it subordinates left politics to electoral efforts.

I think you’re right about how the lesser-evil approach to elections has often sucked the air out of the sails of left politics, but I don’t think it need do so. Having spent many years working in the Green Party, I know through hard experience that the most obvious alternative to the lesser evil approach (trying to build something actually good) is not helped by having the greater evil win. Republican victories suck even more air out of left politics (in part because many manage to convince themselves during periods of Republican Presidencies and Congresses that Democratic politics are left politics).

So I guess I’d say the questions of how one treats the poor electoral choices one has today and how one builds a better politics for the future should, in most cases, be answered separately. I do think that it takes a certain act of will to keep one’s focus on the medium-to-long run and on non-electoral political work, when so much national attention is on short-run, electoral politics. But we should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time…and stay aware that the walking (building for the future) is ultimately more significant and worthy of effort than the chewing gum (voting for the lesser evil in the meantime).

Here’s another account of “how the political system works” that I think is worth reading. It concentrates on GOP tactics.

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

piglet at 164: thanks for linking that Lind piece at Salon, which looks to be worth reading.

mcclaren at 173:
Then Obama can work the joystick on a drone flying over Pakistan and murder some women and children in a wedding party before he returns to his praise for civil rights and the basic foundations of limited government in a free and open society.
The drone campaign is open to serious criticism, but comments like this, which imply that the drone strikes overwhelmingly kill women and children in wedding parties, do not constitute such criticism. There is no consensus on how many civilians vs “militants” (an umbrella term here to cover a range of groups operating in the border regions) have been killed by the drones, but there is some consensus that the strikes have killed a fair number of mid-level and low-level fighters. At this point the strikes should probably be scaled back since, among other things, it’s not clear that the military benefits have been worth the costs (both human and in terms of generating anti-US sentiment). At least, as some experts have proposed, control of the drone strikes in Pakistan should be transferred from the CIA to the US military.

LFC @174:
The drone campaign is open to serious criticism, but comments like this, which imply that the drone strikes overwhelmingly kill women and children in wedding parties, do not constitute such criticism.

Current estimates place legitimate terrorists at 6% of Pakistan drone casualties and innocent women and children, including wedding parties and the funerals of people killed in previous drone strikes, at 94% of Pakistan drone casualties.

For example, see this report.

A new report from the Conflict Monitoring Centre (CMC) has reported that 2,043 Pakistanis have been slain in CIA drone strikes in the past 5 years, with the vast majority of them innocent civilians.

As always, the scholarly and astute response to the hard numbers cited by official reports is: blanket denial. These facts are just wrong, because WOW they can’t be right.

Inspiring.

On drone casualties:
Estimates of civilian and other casualties differ b/c there is no “official” or precise count. The CMC cannot possibly know that exactly “2,043 Pakistanis” have been killed in strikes in the past 5 years.
See Bergen & Tiedemann, here.

piglet 09.05.11 at 6:37 pm

” I thought Bérubé is the guy who usually writes satires (often quite entertaining). I’m missing the irony if any in this post and apparently I’m not the only one. Has anybody figured out the intention of that post yet?”

It’s the classic end-state of the cute, ironic, snarky, with-it Kewl Guy.

When a plurality of voters chose to get their “information” from FOX new or worse talk radio outlets and chain e-mails not much can be done. This whole thread is mental masturbation. Prepare for more retreats.

Political Progress, Take Two:

Let L equal the set of P(x,y,z) in R cubed such that: x = sin t, y = cos t, z + 1 = t/pi and 0 is less than or equal to t which is less than 2 pi. Label P sub 1 = (0, 1, -1) as Communist, P sub 2 = (1, 0, -1/2) as Liberal, P sub 3 = (0, -1, 0) as Centrist, P sub 4 = (-1, 0, 1/2) as Conservative and P sub 5 = (0, 1, 1) as Fascist, and you’ve got a (normalized) graph of political progress which winds around from P sub 1 to P sub 5 and crashes back to P sub 1 again in an infinite loop of axial oscillation.

The operative metaphor is axial oscillation.

OP, #8: Disappointed liberal and left intellectuals convince themselves that Republican challenger can’t be all that much worse than Democratic candidate, since Democrat is sellout Judas stealth-Republican to begin with, Republican candidate will surely be more moderate than he appears when he is pandering to his base, and both candidates are working within the very narrow parameters of the corporate duopoly anyway.

Very late to the party, I know, but this does sound like an unflattering description of Nader voters. “Can’t be all that much worse” sounds like a reference to something Nader once said in 2000 about Democrats being as bad as Republicans. And “corporate duopoly” is a trademark (and entirely accurate) Nader phrase.

Campaigning dumbs everything down. If Nader had said “the Democrats are probably not quite so bad as the Republicans, but they are very, very bad indeed,” no one could possibly have objected. But then, no one would have noticed, and so he would have had to go on endlessly answering the same stupid question from the press: “Aren’t you afraid you’ll help elect the Republican?”

He should have patiently explained to the journalists (and did, of course, in print) that every strategy has its cost, and that the cost of halting the steady slide of the Democratic Party to the right and gradually forging an alternative that actually defends the public interest and expresses the popular will might be a lot of defeats on the way. But an explanation of this sort would have far exceeded the press’s attention span.

It does sound, Michael, as though you’re condescending a little to Nader voters in this paragraph — as though we were clueless enrages rather than fully conscious of being caught in a painful dilemma not of our making. It might have been more fruitful to harp on the absurd and undemocratic character of the American electoral system.

Charles Peterson @187:
We need to bring back the smoke filled rooms; those smoking had lots at stake, unlike the typical primary voter. Emphasis on electoral primaries and internal party quotas are two among many culprits which have destroyed parties.

What makes you think that moneyed interests (to use a somewhat archaic phrase) had less influence in the days of the smoke-filled rooms? The intent of the reforms that opened up the nominating process, at least in the Democratic party, was laudable; there have been some unintended consequences, but mostly driven by developments that the original reformers of the McGovern-Fraser commission probably could not have foreseen. Rather than bringing back the smoke-filled rooms, the primary process itself could be changed in ways that might make it more democratic. Why does everything start with two states, one quite unrepresentative of the country’s population, the other quite small, except that it’s been done that way for a long time and some people will scream very loudly if anyone attempts to change it?

Red at 155: “Never thought I’d say this, but I’ll quote Biden here.”

Really? ‘Stop whining’? Funny, it’s crap like that (in other words, unconcealed bits of utter disdain towards one’s potential voters) that has made it completely impossible for me to pull that lever for Democrat these days. Maybe I’m part of an insignificant minority but Democrats seem to think their voters have no right to their own dignity. I held my nose and voted for Clinton in ’92 and ’96 but simply cannot do that any more. Things in the party have got significantly worse, and that’s absolutely not the Republican’s fault.

Seconding House Carl about the disdain, and adding in condescension for good measure as a surefire way to turn away potential allies.

Obama lost me last December with this:

And we will be able to feel good about ourselves, and sanctimonious about how pure our intensions are…. This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people. (From here and about a million other places where it was quoted.)

Pot, meet kettle.

Obama was the first non-local politician I ever gave money to. That won’t happen again.

Ben, Charles Pierce looked closely at the 1980 election, and he comes to a different conclusion, one that accords with my memory of that debacle.

Thanks, Poicephalus! I happen to be in the world capital of Jerry Lewis Protests, Charleston, South Carolina — where Harriet McBryde Johnson got the ball rolling many years ago.

And in the course of trying to figure out why this thread went so very wrong, it appears that I made yet another mistake: I seriously misunderestimated the malevolence of my old friend Christian H. I should have realized that something was amiss when he responded to my very simple observation that Obama did not campaign on single-payer healthcare or withdrawal from Afghanistan by saying “Democrats didn’t promise anything,” which constitutes a pretty awful misreading of my point about some liberals’ misreading of Obama. And comment 28 is pretty bad, too. But it’s his comment 105 that really goes over the line:

Well from time to time Michael writes posts like this. It’s a three-step process:

1. Write post designed to provoke some class of people, employing very clever double-secret irony.

2. Class of people is duly provoked. Michael points out they are StupidandVirulent unable to grasp his brilliant double-secret irony.

3. Michael’s vast intellectual superiority is once again confirmed.

I think I’ll start a campaign to draft Michael’s ego for president. Surely no Republican can beat that.

I’m genuinely surprised by how totally wrong this is. It’s untrue about this post, obviously; nowhere in this thread have I said, “ha ha, only kidding folks, I was just trying to provoke you and I didn’t really mean it, it was all a big joke and the joke was on you, ha ha.” Rather, I have tried to explain time and again that when I wrote “symbolic and therefore important,” I did not mean “symbolic and therefore unimportant.” And I have tried to explain time and again that no hippies were actually harmed in the writing of this post. That’s really not the same thing as saying “I was only kidding.” I do hope most people can tell the difference.

More important, Christian’s remark isn’t true about anything I’ve ever written. I just don’t do that kind of thing. If you have an Internet near you, you could check this for yourself. Why, this very blog keeps an archive of everything I’ve posted here, and my own blog’s archives are still up, as well. You’ll find that Christian used to be a regular at my old place, and though he was always a bit too quick to accuse me of killing Palestinian children with my bare hands, and though he is a charter member of The One True Left Has Never Been Wrong! Club, he never behaved as badly as he has in this thread.

Now, it’s true that sometimes I write things that people misread, and it’s true that sometimes I am “ironic” in a way that people don’t get. But I have never deliberately sought to provoke Internet trollishness the way Christian claims here. I am sorry to see that my old friend Christian has said this, and perhaps someday, when he regains his senses, he’ll realize that he owes me an apology.

Obama did promise hope and change — the two things that he spent his term systematically destroying. Now, if he’d promised to condescend to his supporters as sanctimonious purists, then mission accomplished.

Michael B, I of course think that the people who’ve been going off on you in comments here are wrong. But, tangentially, I have trouble with the ironical style as well. I used to have more trouble with it when John Holbo was arguing about philosophical matters with other people who cared to argue about them, and it became clear that communication was pretty much impossible. Whenever there was serious disagreement, other people would think that he was being more ironic than he was, or he would confess to a kind of passive-aggressive ironicism, or something. The whole thing was complicated by the people arguing against him being determined and annoying misreaders, but really, irony is always difficult to decode on the Internet. And the fear of writing too seriously often leads to ways to get around a habitual ironical style that sound condescending. (If I’m never addressed as one of the “Plain People of the Internet” again because I don’t understand something, that will be fine with me.)

Basically, why is this post in a mock-ironical style? It’s pretty horrific that nothing changes, isn’t it?

“4. Democratic president gives in to Republicans repeatedly on a handful of symbolic (and therefore important to politically active voters) issues, appointments, regulations, etc.”

In re to Obama, one can hardly say that his surrender to the Republicans (whether or not Obama actually desired these outcomes) occurred on merely symbolic issues. In fact these were mostly issues of real substance. Such as; the elevation of deficit reduction over jobs, extension of the Bush tax cuts, the public option, failure to investigate and prosecute criminal behaviour in the financial sector, and a stimulas package that was both too small and improperly targeted.

Not sure what really to believe on the Carter not primaried contrafactual, but I always thought his early concession speech “gaffe” was a microcosm of so much of his administration and relationship with the party.

White House press secretary Jody Powell had tried to get the soon-to-be ex-president to delay his speech until eleven o’clock Eastern time, when the California polls would close, but Carter didn’t want anyone to think he was sulking in the White House and insisted, “It’s ridiculous. Let’s go and get it over with.” Many in the Democratic establishment were furious with Carter for conceding more than an hour before the polls closed on the West Coast, thus hurting other Democratic candidates in the Pacific time zone. “What in God’s name is wrong with you people?” Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill fumed by phone from Boston to Carter’s congressional liaison, Frank Moore. When Moore told O’Neill that Carter just wanted to “get it over with,” damn the western Democrats, the speaker exploded with rage, yelling, “You guys came in like a bunch of jerks, and I see you’re going out the same way.” Representative Tom Foley of Washington State put it more succinctly: “It was vintage Carter at its dead worst.”

In re to Obama, one can hardly say that his surrender to the Republicans (whether or not Obama actually desired these outcomes) occurred on merely symbolic issues. In fact these were mostly issues of real substance.

The fact that this is comment 202 is totally and completely amazing and makes me never want to use language again. But for now I’ll simply assume that people are using software programs that automatically insert the word “mere” (or some form thereof) before the word “symbolic.”

Certainly Reagan’s victory, like Kennedy’s primary challenge (and Anderson’s independent candidacy, for that matter) reflected Carter’s problems with his base. But Kennedy didn’t create those problems.

Yeah, Ben, but Kennedy was symptomatic (I almost said “symbolic”) of those problems. As an Obama challenger would be, as well — if anyone could find a plausible candidate.

Basically, why is this post in a mock-ironical style? It’s pretty horrific that nothing changes, isn’t it?

Where I come from, Rich, people have many ways of expressing despair. I was simply looking for something other than “ow, despair,” but now I have just that much more of it.

207, now. You can sneer at me again, Prof. Berube. Doesn’t change the fact (Salient was close, here) that it is highly likely that it is your use of language that is deficient (in this case, giving you the benefit of the doubt).

House Carl @192: wrong quote. I was talking about ACA. Remember what Biden said at the signing? (Not really quotable on a polite blog.)

So three threads (211 comments on this one) and no-one has said anything about the possibility of Bloomberg as a 3rd party candidate. Thoughts?

What Daragh said.

Or, to put it less compactly, I’ll recycle a comment I left at LGM last week:

“Irene’s passage through town last weekend was a salutary reminder of the fact that Bloomberg is the epitome of good ol’ fashioned big, activist government. I’ve got no problem with that, of course, and I was actually pretty impressed by the way the city mobilized for what turned out to be a fortunate near-miss. But then I’m a DFH.

Elsewhere in the political sphere, candidates for president can call for the dismantling of FEMA without being hauled away in a straightjacket, and Very Serious People will stroke their chins in response and say “Hmmm, maybe he’s on to something.”

The notion that Bloomberg could ever hope to get national political traction in a climate where even Democrats pay lip service to the vacuous nostrums of Reaganism is beyond hilarious. Just imagine him in a debate with a teabagger like Perry or Bachmann, patiently explaining the critical role of government in getting people to eat fewer trans fats.”

Ed@211: They were also free to decide that there were races on the ballot other than the presidential race that mattered and were worth turning out for. Local pols could have built a good enough turnout operation to get there supporters to vote early, or their supporters to vote for them, despite what was happening at the presidential level.

Please don’t ever run a political campaign for any candidate I care about winning.

This was presumably intended as intelligent, insightful and funny. It does not strike me as being any of them. Odd, since you are usually pretty intelligent, insightful, and even somewhat amusing.