Grasping

[muckefuck]

monshu wants everyone to know that following careful consideration (and the strategic application of high-quality Swiss chocolate) he has decided not to "defriend" me. I had him over for lomo adobado last night and we got into a three-hour discussion of party politics, democracy and democratisation, nationalism, decolonialisation, social evolution, and the future of mankind. As usual with such conversations, no firm conclusions were reached, but we both felt very satisfied with our own erudition afterwards.

Afterwards, I called back my sister to plan our upcoming family wedding weekend and we ended up dissecting the elections. She lives in a swing state, so her experience of them was about as different from mine as it's possible to find. For starters: Two(!) calls from Laura Bush urging her to vote for highly-qualified and morally-upstanding local candidates. Federer, the Republican candidate for an open House seat (Gephardt's old district), mailed her a copy of a brochure distributed by Carnahan to GLB supporters along with a letter decrying his opponent's lax moral values. He lost, as did the other conservative running for the other open seat, but Blunt took the governor's mansion in a hotly contested race. No anti-gay marriage amendment passed--only because this had already been taken care of in the primaries.

deFriending total stands at: 2. I'm sorry to see rootbeer1 go, but I understand that he's following kitchenbeard's call for a full-on boycott of anyone associated in any way with the Republican Party. (They're in SF. They can afford that luxury.)

I was going to compose a post today expounding on the painful truth that, if you really are flabbergasted by the election results, then it only goes to show how out of touch you are with vast stretches of the American electorate. Fortunately, impeccably progressive topaz_munro tackled this already, giving it a much more positive spin then I think I would've been able to. (Edit: Be sure to scroll down to forceful response by jacflash, which says a lot of what I've been saying only better.) For the past year, I've been grumbling about the number of people I run into who seem to spend most of their time in self-contained progressive enclaves and left-wing echo chambers, failing to make any real effort to comprehend people who view things dramatically differently than they do. Well, here's the call to action: It's time to stop disparaging "religious nuts," "NASCAR dads," and "security moms" and redouble our efforts to determine how it is we've failed to win them over to our causes. They're not making the same effort to understand you and your ideas? Tough; the simple fact is that you need them more than they need you.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Feel free to be appalled, but how could you look at the same opinion polls that I do, which clearly show that the majority of Americans do not approve of gay marriage, and be shocked that, when given the chance to outlaw it, they do? I wasn't pleased that all eleven referenda passed, but I wasn't the least bit surprised either.

[bunj.livejournal.com]

I see them as akin to Jim Crow laws. They've been enacted for similar reasons, and will hopefully be swept away in time. I just hope it won't take 100 years (give or take) this time.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I think you're disagreeing about different things. There's no question that a majority of the electorate oppose gay marriage, and not a lot of surprise that the amendments all passed.

But I think this is also clear: the Republicans saw a lot of people who would support Bush if they voted but weren't motivated to get out to the polls, and tried to figure out a way to get them to come vote. The gay marriage issue was the bait to get these fish out to the polls. Once they were there they'd vote for Bush anyway -- the trick was figuring out what would get them out there.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I think you make a reasonable case and, of course, the question it immediately poses is: Why haven't the Democrats been able to find an issue that motivates voters who swing their way in equal measure? I suppose this is what my Congresscritter was aiming for when she added two non-binding referenda on the Iraq War and one on universal health care to the ballot (a move that I otherwise find hard to explain).

(Plus, it circles back to what you and I are saying about having failed to allay the fears and address the misconceptions of the majority. People disapprove of a lot of things, but usually not strongly enough to make a special effort to get to the polls.)

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

well, honestly, the idealist in me would like to believe that one of the defining virtues of america is that we do not necessarily outlaw all of those things with which we personally disapprove.

i recognize that both major parties consider this notion heresy. but weirdly, i thought the public at large had a more nuanced view. maybe that's strange. i remember polls during clinton's scandals, for instance, which clearly showed both a) that the public thought he was kind of slimy, and b) that the public didn't think it was worth kicking him out over. that's the sort of nuance that politicians just don't seem either able or willing to convey; but i'm convinced the public is actually capable of grasping it.

i thought enough people who disapproved wouldn't think it should be outlawed. though i did expect the referenda to pass in some states.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

well, honestly, the idealist in me would like to believe that one of the defining virtues of america is that we do not necessarily outlaw all of those things with which we personally disapprove.

If that really were the case, then why would we have any need of civil rights lawyers at all? The parallel that bunj notes to Jim Crow laws is very apt.

The nuance only seems to come in on the Federal level, where a majority still oppose amending the Constitution to enshrine marriage discrimination. They seem to have no difficulty at all, however, with inscribing it into their less-hallowed state charters.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

maybe i thought the jim crow days were behind us. i did say this was the idealist in me.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The idealist in me remembers that it was a century from the abolition of slavery to the coming of the Civil Rights movement. By comparison, thirty years from Stonewall to gay marriage (anywhere, if not everywhere) strikes me as pretty amazing progress.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

in any case, my point is that the republicans appear to have definitively proved the tremendous value of locking oneself in a myopic echo chamber. it's how they won. for you to chide the democrats for doing the same just sounds snarky. the democrats' problem may be not doing it enough.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I disagree. The Republicans had to step at least far enough outside of their own echo chambers to figure out that opposing same-sex marriage wouldn't alienate more voters than it brought it or bring out the opponents' supporters in equal or larger numbers. Ciampa and his ilk in Kerryland failed to do this--to their cost. Similarly, in Illinois, the GOP's absolutely incomprehensibly knuckleheaded decision to bring in a hardcore Bible-bashing extremist not only guaranteed a thundering landslide for Obama but had a knockoff effect among moderate surbanites that is blamed for the unseating of Crane in the 8th District.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

The Republicans had to step at least far enough outside of their own echo chambers to figure out that opposing same-sex marriage wouldn't alienate more voters than it brought it or bring out the opponents' supporters in equal or larger numbers.

yes and no. they didn't have to know this; it just had to be true.

having already picked the religious right as their core base of support, they didn't have to step very far to find out what issues that base cared about. the keyes misadventure argues that maybe they thought that issue would work everywhere.

the democrats, by contrast, ditched a candidate who was bringing in new blood and money and energizing the base like crazy (dean), in favor of a colorless centrist. what did it get them?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

48.11%

I would've been stunned to see Dean top that. He was--by his own testimony--Karl Rove's favourite choice of an opponent.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

why, do you think? he would have gotten the diehard liberals and the anyone-but-bush-es, and had the hope of bringing new people to the polls. who do you think voted for kerry who wouldn't have voted for dean?

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Presumably, all the pro-war and conflicted Democrats that Kerry's equivocating and military-credential-brandishing were intended to keep inside the tent.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

sure, presumably. i'd be interested to meet one sometime; i'm not aware that i yet have.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

It seemed that half the bloggers and a few of the media endorsements I read came down that way as the election neared. (Not that that's remotely representative, but presumably neither is your acquaintanceship.)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

More to the point, who would have voted for Dean who didn't already vote for Kerry? We had record turnout in this election, along with first-time voters in record numbers. Everyone who strongly disapproved of the war already voted for Kerry. The "moral values" crowd would have found Dean even less appealing. He would've been harder to portray as a "tax-and-spend liberal", true, but are there really that many people among whom fiscal responsibility is a paramount issue who didn't already go for Kerry? At least four million of them? I don't see it.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

the non-voting liberals, is of course the hope.

i'd be interested to see a breakdown of the first-time voters, or maybe the didn't-vote-last-time voters. bush is credited with having gotten out the religious right vote very effectively. do they comprise the majority of the uptick in voter participation this time? about half? less?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind though that any candidate fiery enough to get lots of new Democrats to the polls is also going to bring out lots of new conservatives to stop him. You need someone who can excite the liberal base without alarming others--much easier said than done.

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

the GOP's absolutely incomprehensibly knuckleheaded decision to bring in a hardcore Bible-bashing extremist

I'm almost beginning to think that the GOP was beginning to suspect Obama was unstoppable in this election and seized the opportunity to set Keyes up for a fall that might get him out of their political hair for a few years...

I can only WISH they were so clever!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Never attribute to malice...

Re: I can only WISH they were so clever!

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Especially since I can't believe that that campaign cost Keyes more credibility than it cost the IL Republicans, who are already running on a deficit what with one thing and another.