Just a note to welcome my former colleague Andrew Levine to the blogosphere, in a blog named “Democrats Now“. His first post explores and explains why it will be so hard to defeat Clintonism within the Democratic Party, and his second delineates some of the mysteries of modern American politics (like, how on earth did the Republicans become Reds?), and makes a reasonable case that Monica Lewinsky saved social security. Andy’s a prolific and clever writer with a quirky sense of humour, and his blog will join the tiny handful that I read daily.
{ 47 comments }
abb1 05.01.07 at 6:03 pm
He’s surprisingly passionate attacking non-crazy rich people’s party from the left. In this political system the non-crazy rich people should be treasured and cherished. C’mon, man, let ’em be, leave them alone.
In fact, send them a check, send them 20 bucks.
C. L. Ball 05.01.07 at 6:43 pm
Too bad Blogger requires you to register; otherwise, I would add him to my blog-log.
Mike Otsuka 05.01.07 at 6:43 pm
But in his post he doesn’t actually explain ‘how, from the 2000 election on, the bad guys got the color “red.‒
Isn’t it no mystery but relatively well-known that before the 2000 election the television networks switched the coloring of the election coverage map back and forth so that if the Democrats were blue and the Republicans red for one election, then the Democrats were red and the Republicans blue at the next election? But we were so transfixed by the 2000 election coverage map that Republican = red and Democrat = blue migrated from our short term to our long term meory?
Gorgle Erf 05.01.07 at 6:58 pm
Mike (#3) is correct.
I recall David Letterman doing a joke in 2000 about how Al Gore would be president of the blue states, and George Bush would be president of the red states. It got a laugh because people didn’t think that way then. Nowadays, it wouldn’t even be thought of as a joke.
Jim S. 05.01.07 at 8:43 pm
I am sorry, but I did not find his blog very enlightening. He has scattered smarts (yes, Bill Clinton was not a very good president) but also continues many of the shibboleths of the American Left (that no leader wants basic change but has to be forced into it, that all American involvement in outside affairs is evil, etc.). Which, perhaps, is to be expected from a senior fellow of the IPS.
Also, does anyone want to admit that it is the oppressed groups-women, minorities, homosexuals-who, by their uncritical support of the Clintonites, have perpetuated the dominance of centrism in the Democratic party. No, because no one wants to admit that such groups are capable poor politics.
James 05.01.07 at 9:19 pm
As a conservative reader, I laugh every time I see guilible or duped as the reason for voting Republican. This translates to “someone didnt vote the why I think they should therefore they are stupid”. Not much of an outreach.
Brett Bellmore 05.01.07 at 9:21 pm
IIRC, there was some goofy formula where the color switch depended both on party AND whether the President was running as an incumbant. (A drunken invention of Cronkite’s, rumor has it.) The specific equence of elections leading up to 2000 resulted in the assignment being stuck on Republicans = red for 8 years straight, and apparently after that the media just dumped the formula, and left it that way.
And, no, there wasn’t any explaination at all. What a cheap bait and switch!
Steve Reuland 05.02.07 at 6:06 am
I figure the reason why Reagan is worshiped and Clinton is demonized is that right-wing mythology requires both a Great Leader and a Great Enemy to make sense of the world. Neither Reagan nor Clinton are ideal candidates for those respective positions, but they’re the only candidates available. Who else are conservatives going to worship? Ford? Bush 41? And who else are they going to hate? Clinton is the most visible and (at least during his presidency) powerful Democrat in decades, so he gets the job. What he actually believed doesn’t much matter; in the conservative psyche he is the Great Satan.
abb1 05.02.07 at 7:32 am
And who else are they going to hate?
Right. And don’t forget: all this happened after the fall of the Soviet Union and before the evil nature of Islam (and the French) was revealed to us. Poor Bubba; wrong place, wrong time.
abb1 05.02.07 at 7:38 am
Btw, a factual point: the “humanitarian” adventure in Somalia wasn’t Clinton’s, he inherited it.
bi 05.02.07 at 7:51 am
Oh no! God forbid that anyone call James “gullible” or “duped”! No Sirs, in this land of free speech and anti-PC, you’re not supposed to call any conservative a “gullible” or “duped” person! Never ever do that, even if you have grounds for doing so!
Steve Reuland, abb1:
Here’s my half-baked take on this whole thing. It seems to me now that the real divide isn’t anti-gay/pro-gay, pro-gun/anti-gun, etc.; the real divide is between those who believe in giving limitless, arbitrary executive power to Our Great Leader, and those who don’t. So if you speak out against Biblical fundamentalism, it’s OK; but the minute you speak out against torture, you’re a treasonous traitor who hates America. (Does this have anything to do with Levine’s “passionate intensity” point? I don’t know.)
(If this half-baked theory is true, then a corollary is that trying to “outreach” to people like “no don’t even try to call me duped!” James will be a waste of time. Because appealing to them means appealing to their totalitarianism, and do we really want that?)
Mike Otsuka 05.02.07 at 8:31 am
Brett — With further digging, I see that the formula is of fairly recent origin and was simply that the party holding the White House at the time was blue and the challenging party red. This is what Erick Erickson of RedState.com writes:
In 1984, the maps varied by network. Some showed Lake Reagan flood the nation, and others showed what could arguably been called (given the outcome) a Reagan slaughter. The map, for some, was covered in red for Reagan,except Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
By the 1990’s the media had fairly standardized the color scheme. The challenger was always red and the incumbent was always blue.
Had they stuck to this in 2004, Kerry states would have been red. But by that point Red = Republican, and Blue = Democrat was too ingrained as the result of our fixation on the 2000 election maps.
alex 05.02.07 at 8:46 am
Interesting blog, but not very convincing if you do not share his views to begin with. Which, come to think of it, describes pretty much all of the blogosphere today.
David Wright 05.02.07 at 9:50 am
I enjoyed reading his pieces because what he calls out as the evils of Clintonism are precisely the things I would like to see in a Democratic president: someone who is socially liberal, but working toward the destruction of the welfare state, and willing to project American power in the pursuit of good ends.
I’d vote for Hillary in a heartbeat if I could be assured that a Republican Congress would ensure that she couldn’t implement socialized medicide. But because I suspect that the Democrats will still control Congress in 2008, I’ll probably vote Republican.
bi 05.02.07 at 11:17 am
Now, why didn’t David Wright say instead “I’d vote for the GOP in a heartbeat if I could be assured that a Democratic Congress would ensure a GOP President can’t work to curtail social liberties and mess up Iraq further than it already is?”
(Because the GOP is always right, even if it’s wrong.)
bi 05.02.07 at 11:29 am
(And nothing prevents David Wright from voting for a presidential candidate from, say, the Libertarian Party — at least if he’s in the right state. So why won’t he do that?)
Brett Bellmore 05.02.07 at 11:51 am
“But by that point Red = Republican, and Blue = Democrat was too ingrained as the result of our fixation on the 2000 election maps.”
I think it probably had more to do with the media’s disinterest in hearing more jokes about Democrats having been asigned the right color. But, anyway, the point was that the blog post did NOT explain the matter.
Brett Bellmore 05.02.07 at 11:56 am
“(And nothing prevents David Wright from voting for a presidential candidate from, say, the Libertarian Party—at least if he’s in the right state.”
The “right” state being any state at all, most Presidential election years, and virtually all of them in other years. The Libs are miles ahead of every other third party in terms of ballot access.
harry b 05.02.07 at 2:28 pm
Brett — I said he delineated, not explained, that one. I know the origins: the mystery is not how it came about, but how it “took”.
David Wright 05.02.07 at 3:58 pm
Bi@1515: I would vote for a GOP presidential candidate in a heartbeat if I could be assured that a Democratic Congress would ensure that he couldn’t curtail social and civil liberties. (I don’t belive either combination would make Iraq work better.) Divided government is probably the most practical way to ensure a less active government.
(Oh, and I do vote for Libertarian candidates in races that are not close, and when the Libertarians run someone not totally crazy.)
David Wright 05.02.07 at 4:18 pm
Bi: I’m curious as to why you prefer the second formulation. From the tone of your response, it sounds like anyone who has something good to say about Republicans or bad about Democrats is suspect in your eyes. But isn’t the second formulation equally suspect? (The first formulation is, in any case, more relevent to a discussion on the Democratic presidential primary.)
Mike Otsuka 05.02.07 at 7:02 pm
Harry — I would have thought the origins of a nearly uniform representation of Republicans as red and Democrats as blue by the media in 2000 would be more puzzling than its persistence thereafter. The mystery is that, although historically the party on the left has been represented by the color red, the networks uniformly represented the Republicans as red in 2000. That stands in need of explanation. What’s not hard to explain is how people would have come strongly to associate red with Republicans and blue with Democrats in 2000, though they didn’t do so in 1996, nor did they associate red with Democrats and blue with Republicans in 1992 (as they were fairly uniformly represented then). The 2000 election was much more bitter and close than the previous ones. And it had that bizarre aftermath in the courts. The prolonged bitterness gave rise to talk of a nation divided. And these maps of red Republican states and blue Democratic states that kept on flashing on our television screens before, during, and for weeks after the 2000 election gave people a useful device for describing this division – American is culturally and ideologically divided into red and blue states. Moreover, once people came to associate red with Republican and blue with Democrat, the networks couldn’t switch the colors around in 2004, even though that’s what their common formula dictated. That would have disoriented everyone.
swampcracker 05.03.07 at 2:43 am
“George Bush looked through Putin’s eyes into his soul and saw that he was good.” Well, of course they hit it off. Putin kissed Bush on the tummy.
bi 05.03.07 at 3:19 pm
David Wright:
Um, what’s the idea behind voting Libertarian only “in races that are not close”? I thought that’s a sure formula for ensuring that your vote will be irrelevant? Unless you’re saying that you vote Libertarian only in races which _are_ close — now that’s a strategy.
And yes, my second formulation is equally suspect — but that’s the whole point, no? OK, the Democrats are disagreeable, but that still doesn’t explain much about why one’ll vote Republican, instead of any other party. After all, having any other party in the White House will achieve divided government…
(About Iraq, the Libertarian Party web site accuses the Democratic Party of drafting “pork barrel spending” into their withdrawal bill, although it admits that Bush “is the one who made the initial request for it”. Well, when it comes to crazies, I guess at this point everyone’s pretty crazy…)
seth edenbaum 05.03.07 at 4:31 pm
From Amazon:
The blog is little more than boilerplate and generalization. Good academic blogs are substantive: he’s underestimating his new medium. And regarding the blurb above, I hope he realizes that categories of the reasonable lie behind any order of discourse. What the American ideology lacks is a sense of institutionalized (formalized) irony! The “reality based community” is on no more solid ground than believers in “original intent.”
Meanings change faster than words. Experts deal in words, wise men in meanings. America is a land of experts
seth edenbaum 05.03.07 at 4:34 pm
Clinton was white trash running for president as a black republican. He won because he’s Elvis.
bi 05.03.07 at 5:08 pm
(OK, I misunderstood what David Wright meant by “races that are not close” — now that I think of it, he probably means a close race between the Republicans and the Democrats.)
= = =
“Meanings change faster than words. Experts deal in words, wise men in meanings.”
Wow. That is, like, so substantive. Bleh.
And didn’t Seth Edenbaum say, “I’m done here”? I guess “I’m done here” now means “I’m still not done, dang it, and I’m going to blather on and on without mentioning a single concrete fact.” Just like, you know, how “well-regulated militia” now means “totally unregulated random gun-toting blokes”. And next thing you know, the meaning of the word “meaning” will have shifted to something like “fluffy fact-free meaninglessness”. Meanings sure change really fast, eh don’t they?
bi 05.03.07 at 5:18 pm
And let’s not forget how the meaning of “the meaning of the word ‘meaning'” will probably have changed to goodness knows what. Heck, repeat this profound exercise a few more times. Forget about those grubby, dirty, low-level things like “facts”, or “toxic chemicals”, or “clean water”. Just blather all day long about the meaning of “meaning”, and you too can be a good President.
abb1 05.03.07 at 5:50 pm
White trash? The guy’s a Rhodes Scholar. What does ‘white trash’ mean, exactly?
James 05.03.07 at 10:29 pm
Just like how “well regulated militia” is changed from the reason for the constitutional right to the right itself. If you do not like a right granted under the constitution, ammend the constitution.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070319&s=wittes031907
seth edenbaum 05.03.07 at 10:30 pm
Oh well, since I’m bored and have nuttin’ better to do…
I’ll explain this once more, bi, so even you will get it:
Once upon a time we thought that men were perfectly capable of understanding and articulating the views of women, that whites were similarly capable of speaking for blacks and that heterosexuals could speak for cum-drunk scum-su…. oh I’m sorry …homo-sexuals. These are just three examples out of many. To this day in fact the voices of sensitive enlightened Jews are heard daily in our media [that would be TPM Media] explaining how much and how little or by what means “we” should learn to accept and understand “them.”
All of these are examples of reason and reasonableness, of rationality and [cough] rationalization. It’s a human failing to only understand what we see in relation to what we’ve seen before and know. No one is immune, even experts and pedants. It helps to expect the worst from ourselves. This is irony: look/suck it up.
And yes abb1, “Bubba” is white trash from Arkansas.
seth edenbaum 05.04.07 at 3:02 am
Again I was enjoying myself too much and skipped a word or two.
Them=Arabs of course, not jews.
sorry bi.
Matt McIrvin 05.04.07 at 3:32 am
Isn’t it no mystery but relatively well-known that before the 2000 election the television networks switched the coloring of the election coverage map back and forth so that if the Democrats were blue and the Republicans red for one election, then the Democrats were red and the Republicans blue at the next election? But we were so transfixed by the 2000 election coverage map that Republican = red and Democrat = blue migrated from our short term to our long term meory?
I’ve heard this story elsewhere, but is it actually true? My recollection from actually watching those broadcasts in and before 2000 is that the networks generally used different conventions from one another other, with no regular pattern. Sometimes, they used green and blue.
My own theory is that the modern red/blue identification comes not from what any TV network was using on election night 2000, but from the USA Today county-by-county map that got so much attention in the aftermath–the one that seemed to show a solid red nation with tiny blue flecks in it, an image very comforting and justifying to Republicans.
bi 05.04.07 at 6:30 am
James:
OK, so what you’re saying is that the Constitution gives people the _right_ to bear arms in order that there may be a “well-regulated militia”, therefore people should have the right to bear arms in such a way that there’s an _unregulated_ _mass_ _of_ _random_ _gun-toting_ _blokes?_ Plain meaning of the Constitution indeed.
(And yes, it’s high time to redo the 2nd Amendment. The times when a sizeable militia can — or will — defeat an oppressive federal government are long past, and this original rationale as espoused by the US founders needs a good hard relook.)
= = =
Seth Edenbaum:
No, I _still_ don’t get what you mean, and I’m not even sure what you’re saying now has any demonstrable relationship with what you said further up. Then again, maybe that’s just because I’m a pedantic brute who gets down and dirty with those things called “facts”, unlike those high-falutin wiseguys, I mean wise men, who have long transcended the world of “fact” and entered the world of “meaning” (and “truthiness”).
How about, like, pointing out some actual _factual_ _errors_ in what Levine writes, instead of dwelling all day long on generic general generalities? That’ll help those poor, fact-oppressed, unwashed masses like us understand what the heck you’re on about.
seth edenbaum 05.04.07 at 1:37 pm
All I said about Levine’s blog is that he’s preaching to the choir. I may be in the choir and I may agree with everything he says but that’s not a reason to pay close attention. I need more.
Also, as a matter of language, statements are not those facts to which they refer. As regards meaning, try:
Due Process [of law]
Cruel and unusual [punishment]
“Men”
Justice
As objects among objects we live in a world of facts but perception places us in a world of ideas.
harry b 05.04.07 at 6:07 pm
seth — go back to him a few times in the next few months and if you don’t find anything illuminating or funny in that time I’ll be very surprised (if he keeps it up, as I presume he will).
bi 05.04.07 at 6:44 pm
“I may agree with everything he says but that’s not a reason to pay close attention”
What, to you, will be a reason to pay close attention then? For me, a “Democrats Now” blog is worth paying some attention if it tackles existing social issues in interesting (and relevant) ways, and brings new, important questions to light. I mean, have you ever wondered why Reagan is the Great Saviour and Clinton is the Great Satan, even though their policies are similar? It’s an important question which has ramifications for campaign policy — lots of folks keep talking about “rushing to the middle” — but isn’t it surprising that most people, like, haven’t even given this question much thought?
“statements are not those facts to which they refer.”
Wow, more fact-free profundity. So your logic is, because phrases like “cruel and unusual punishment” and “consciousness is immortal” exist, therefore we should avoid all things associated with concrete facts (like, say, “number of people killed”) in our discussions! Seriously, _what?_ (One doesn’t need a Ph.D. in Philosophy to know that our resident Wise Man just made an elementary philosophical error — confusing “is” for “ought”.)
seth edenbaum 05.05.07 at 12:40 am
HB, I’ll do that.
I only made my comments about Levine’s the blog because I’ve been spending a lot of time arguing with the right-wing “netroots.”
Arguing, trying not to fight: you have to remember not to take anything for granted; insults and generalizations are counterproductive. And the right is far from having a monopoly on stupidity and arrogance.
bi 05.05.07 at 6:58 am
Seth Edenbaum:
Well, if you think that asking a question like `why’s Clinton still the Great Satan when he’s tried so hard to look like Reagan?’ is merely “preaching to the choir”, then you clearly have a huge problem. It should be abundantly clear at any rate that such a question is a lot more useful than spewing boilerplate fluffies like “the right is far from having a monopoly on stupidity and arrogance” (even if Levine’s answer to the question isn’t totally satisfactory).
bi 05.05.07 at 10:40 am
And I thought that Reagan-Clinton comparison underscores the whole futility of this whole “outreach” exercise — Clinton tried so hard to look like Reagan, and what did he get from the Reaganites, but a reputation as the Great Satan(tm)?
Don’t reach out to “right-wing netroots”; every indication has it that it’s a waste of time. Reach out to swing voters.
seth edenbaum 05.05.07 at 12:39 pm
Oy vey.
I think it was Gingrich who said that Clinton had stolen most of his platform from republicans. Continuing along this line the next step would be for republicans to move to the right, which they did, continuing a longer process, to the point where the issues devolved into the simple imperative of getting and maintaining power: politics as policy, where we are today.
The more the democrats caved, the more contempt republicans had for them. It’s pretty simple. And as I’ve said before, it all begins in the school yard. Bullies don’t want your lunch money, they want to be bullies. Give them something easily and they’ll want more, and hate you more. Bullies are cynics. Caving to them easily confirms to them that principles mean nothing.
And of course liberals are divided between the powerful who make money the same way the republicans do and the “intellectuals” who think that if only the people understood they would rise up on their own. Democrats haven’t known how to lead in years. Leadership smacks of authoritarianism doesn’t it?
“And we’re interested in Ideas!”
Ideas mean nothing if you’re not observant.
seth edenbaum 05.05.07 at 12:46 pm
Since I haven’t gone off on this in a while: it’s liberals not conservatives who drive gentrification. And midwestern college towns as well are full of very angry people.
abb1 05.05.07 at 3:08 pm
It doesn’t work like this, democrats don’t just cave in, political parties don’t move right just because someone decided to move right. There are socio-economic reasons. Greater concentration of power by the big business. Globalization destroying the manufacturing sector, the unions. This kinda stuff. They bully not because they’re bullies, but because they know they’re stronger.
abb1 05.05.07 at 3:15 pm
I say – they hated Clinton because they felt that his rhetoric and policies were unjustifiably left of the new center of political gravity at that time. It doesn’t matter that the same policies used to be right of the center, the times had changed.
bi 05.06.07 at 4:14 am
abb1: Well, if your thesis is true, then why hasn’t just about every European country moved this far right? Globalization doesn’t just affect America.
bi 05.06.07 at 4:16 am
Seth Edenbaum, if you can’t stop yourself from ending almost every post with a non-sequitur fluffy generality like “experts deal in words, wise men in meanings” or “ideas mean nothing if you’re not observant”, then you really, really, really should remember to take your meds.
abb1 05.06.07 at 7:46 am
Europeans countries typically have a very different political system: parliamentary system with proportional representation and publicly financed campaigns; much more difficult for the big business to take over. And they did move right too, just not that far.
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