Why, part II

Slate has run a series in the wake of Tuesday's re-election of George W. Bush headlined "Why Americans Hate Democrats - A Dialogue." Below are excerpts, links and reactions. But first, I have to deal with the title. I think liberals can rest easy – while it's true some conservatives do hate Democrats, I don't think that's true and I don't think that's what the election indicated. Just because liberal America hates Republicans (or more specifically the iron triangle of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft) doesn't mean we hate you back. Rather, I think a better title for the piece would be "Exodus: How to avoid 40 years in the desert."

Our first contribution comes from Chris Suellentrop:

Vision without details beats details without vision. President Bush put forward a powerful and compelling philosophy of what the government should do at home and abroad: Expand liberty. You can disagree with Bush's implementation of that vision, but objecting to it as a matter of principle isn't a political winner. ...

...The question for Democrats is whether Rove's formula will turn out to be a one-time trick tied to Bush's personal popularity and the emotional bond the nation formed with him after the trauma of 9/11, or whether the Democratic Party has been relegated to permanent, if competitive, minority status. Are the Democrats once again a regional party, the new Eisenhower Republicans of the Northeast? For seven consecutive presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has failed to garner 50 percent of the vote. Not since Jimmy Carter in 1976 has a Democrat won a majority, and even Watergate could get Carter only 50.1 percent.

Astute point from Suellentrop. Bush framed the arguement in a way that no one could plausibly disagree with him. Republicans were driven up a tree when we allowed Clinton to say things like "I'm for education" and not force any specificity from him. Specificity kills - Travis, Clinton and Bush all know this. Suellenwhatever is also right to point to 2008 to see how the evangelicals turnout. Their reaction could be the single biggest factor for the continued effectivness of the Democratic party.

Next we hear from William Saletan.

Nearly 60 million people came out to vote for George W. Bush yesterday because they think that he represents their values and that you don't. Prove them wrong and you'll be the majority party again. How? Start by changing the way you talk about pocketbook issues. Remember Bill Clinton's commitment to help people who "work hard and play by the rules"? Your positions on taxes and labor would be assets instead of liabilities if you explained them in moral terms. ...

...A party that believes in right and wrong at home must be assertive about right and wrong abroad. You need a serious antiterrorist agenda. Otherwise, when you object to a war like Iraq, you sound like the peace party. I'm not asking you to act like you care about this stuff. I'm asking you to care about it for real, and not just at election time.

Saletan's plan would involve locking up the peacenik wing of the party into the closet right beside Cynthia McKinney and Jim McDermitt. Could work. But it would mean that liberal hawks like Joe Lieberman would again run free in the party. Are Democrats ready for that?

Next, Timothy Noah poo-poos the typical three solutions for Democrats:

Move right: "In theory, there ought to be a point where the GOP has moved so far to the right that nobody will vote for its candidates. But in practice, I'm not confident that such a point exists."

Move left: "...while a more leftist agenda might be advisable policy, as politics it doesn't work. Merely to identify oneself as "liberal" is suicide for most politicians, and these days you even see private citizens edging away from the label."

Stand pat (allowing the populace to come around): "And who knows whether this demographic messiah will ever arrive, anyway?"

Finally, my favorite commentary (for its ridiculousness) comes from Jane Smiley, who among other things is an author with an apparent burr under her saddle. She entitles her manifesto "The unteachable ignorance of the red states," and doesn't cool down until her rant is done. Read the following and marvel:

I say forget introspection. It's time to be honest about our antagonists. My predecessors in this conversation are thoughtful men, and I honor their ideas, but let's try something else. I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million—my relatives are not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority.)

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. There used to be a kind of hand-to-hand fight on the frontier called a "knock-down-drag-out," where any kind of gouging, biting, or maiming was considered fair. The ancestors of today's red-state voters used to stand around cheering and betting on these fights. When the forces of red and blue encountered one another head-on for the first time in Kansas Territory in 1856, the red forces from Missouri, who had been coveting Indian land across the Missouri River since 1820, entered Kansas and stole the territorial election. The red news media of the day made a practice of inflammatory lying—declaring that the blue folks had shot and killed red folks whom everyone knew were walking around. The worst civilian massacre in American history took place in Lawrence, Kan., in 1862—Quantrill's raid. The red forces, known then as the slave-power, pulled 265 unarmed men from their beds on a Sunday morning and slaughtered them in front of their wives and children. The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America. Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are—they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence. The blue state citizens make the Rousseauvian mistake of thinking humans are essentially good, and so they never realize when they are about to be slugged from behind.

Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you—if you don't believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. A corollary to this point is that they make sure you understand that Satan resides in the toils and snares of complex thought and so it is best not try it. ...

She goes on (and on, and on...), but this post won't, other than to ask how she equates modern Red Staters to a butchering mob. Is this really how she sees me? Perhaps it's me who should be despondent. Now who exactly is prejudiced here? Frankly, I hope she is done trying to learn me a lesson.