Monday, November 22, 2004
Holy Smurfin' USA
Just like bellbottoms and Mohawks, tattoos and dreadlocks, like big bands and slow dancing and homemade brownies, everything comes back. But Smurfs! That's what a young woman at work said.
She was a child of the '80s. She held her head upside down and used gels and sprays to make her front bang stand up on end. And she did that fold and tuck thing on the bottom of her jeans. She wore pastel socks to match her tees. She loved Care Bears, Cabbage Patch Kids... well, you know these things better than I.
Johnny wrote a great song about being a child of the 80's. Maybe he will paste it into his next post -- if we are very, very lucky.
Anyway, when she said the Smurfs will probably make a comeback, well... "Smurf" was a word I hadn't heard in a long while. So like all modern moms, I Googled it. And Holy Smurfin' Smurf of Smurfers. What did I find?
There are pages and pages devoted to proving that Papa Smurf was really Karl Marx and those cute little mushroom villages were really commie towns. And the whole cartoon was a propaganda tool to turn the X-Gen into communists. Ha!
That almost makes sense. I always suspected the whole GI Joe craze was developed to turn the offspring of hippies into soldiers. And lo and behold our first born served in the Gulf War; now our youngest serve in Iraq.
But even worse, the 10th link was a video: "Papa Smurf, Can I Lick Your Butt?"
Shame on you, Generation X. Is this how you all treat your childhood treasures?
And what will you do to Cabbage Patch Kids? One shudders to consider.
Sorry, but this is one of those people who thought Davy Crocket, Circus Boy, Sky King, Superman, Fury, Flicka, RinTinTin, Lassie and Roy & Dale, Annie, Hopalong, and the Lone Ranger were all rolled into one great embodiment of Truth, Justice and the American Way. Good guys who were never wrong, who never lost, and who would never get their butts licked!
Just like bellbottoms and Mohawks, tattoos and dreadlocks, like big bands and slow dancing and homemade brownies, everything comes back. But Smurfs! That's what a young woman at work said.
She was a child of the '80s. She held her head upside down and used gels and sprays to make her front bang stand up on end. And she did that fold and tuck thing on the bottom of her jeans. She wore pastel socks to match her tees. She loved Care Bears, Cabbage Patch Kids... well, you know these things better than I.
Johnny wrote a great song about being a child of the 80's. Maybe he will paste it into his next post -- if we are very, very lucky.
Anyway, when she said the Smurfs will probably make a comeback, well... "Smurf" was a word I hadn't heard in a long while. So like all modern moms, I Googled it. And Holy Smurfin' Smurf of Smurfers. What did I find?
There are pages and pages devoted to proving that Papa Smurf was really Karl Marx and those cute little mushroom villages were really commie towns. And the whole cartoon was a propaganda tool to turn the X-Gen into communists. Ha!
That almost makes sense. I always suspected the whole GI Joe craze was developed to turn the offspring of hippies into soldiers. And lo and behold our first born served in the Gulf War; now our youngest serve in Iraq.
But even worse, the 10th link was a video: "Papa Smurf, Can I Lick Your Butt?"
Shame on you, Generation X. Is this how you all treat your childhood treasures?
And what will you do to Cabbage Patch Kids? One shudders to consider.
Sorry, but this is one of those people who thought Davy Crocket, Circus Boy, Sky King, Superman, Fury, Flicka, RinTinTin, Lassie and Roy & Dale, Annie, Hopalong, and the Lone Ranger were all rolled into one great embodiment of Truth, Justice and the American Way. Good guys who were never wrong, who never lost, and who would never get their butts licked!
Friday, November 19, 2004
The Unfounded Mandate
Ok. We get it. Bush won. Yes, I know, more voters than any other presidential election since 1968. Yes, he is the first president to win an election with a majority of voters rather than a plurality since his father did it in 1988. Indeed, conservatives around the country are jumping in front of any television camera they can find to tout the plethora of reasons why it was their special interest group that pushed Bush over the edge. The inundation of media coverage to these facts has been so pervasive that one cannot turn on the television, nor read news nor surf on the internet, without suffering from a barrage of pundits who each offer their own not-so-original take on the presidential election. But I am not here to complain about the media, nor am I here to complain about the results of the election. If nothing else, we can take solace in the fact that for the first time in eight years, democracy worked. To the victor go the spoils.
I do find it difficult to swallow the so-called mandate that president and his followers seem to think he has. There are numerous problems with the mere idea that someone who garnered only 51% of the vote has a clear statement from the American people to pursue an agenda that less than 25% of the population fully supports. Don't get me wrong, Bush will win quite a few battles in his pursuit to conservatize the nation – if only for the fact that his party has a majority in Congress and he doesn't have another office to run for. But to presume a mandate is a stretch at best.
A quick look at some election data shows that indeed Bush's mandate, isn't so mandated. In fact, except for larger urban areas where Bush was pounded by Kerry and the large expanses of the prairie-west that, while are also less populated, went soundly for Bush, the country is, and remains, very "purple" (or at least mauve). It indicates that the country is still very split, and is still very moderate. If anything, the country mandates that Bush move to the middle. After all, very nearly half of the country thinks he did a poor job in his first term. All of the data indicates that they didn't vote for Bush because he wasn't conservative enough.
The most dangerous assertion that is being made on a daily basis is that the so-called "Born Again Evangelicals" are solely responsible for Bush's victory. It took very little time for Bob Jones to close the gap between himself and the president after more than four years of estrangement. In his "Congratulatory Letter To George W. Bush" he claimed, " In your re-election, God has graciously granted America—though she doesn't deserve it—a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly. Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you." Whatever world Bob Jones lives in, it isn't one anchored in reality. If nothing else, it is a slap in the face to the 77% of the population who don't identify themselves as "Born Again/Evangelical" much less the 21% of those who do identify themselves as such and still voted for Kerry.
Many pundits have attributed the "success" of "Born Agains" as a voter block to the inclusion of "Same Sex Marriage Ban Amendments" on the ballot of 11 states. Karl Rove is praised for his foresight in anticipating the power of social conservatives in this regard. Yet, even Andrew Sullivan disputes the effect that they had on these states. In the end, Evangelicals had roughly the same impact as other voter blocks around the nation, perhaps less so when you consider that the largest voting blocks of Evangelicals were in states that were "red" anyway (their chief help in these areas being expanding an already double digit Bush lead). However, if we are to assume that Rove (Bush) used this strategy to great effect, then perhaps Howard Dean had the best analysis. In a speech at Northwestern University (as quoted in truthout.org), he stated:
Ok. We get it. Bush won. Yes, I know, more voters than any other presidential election since 1968. Yes, he is the first president to win an election with a majority of voters rather than a plurality since his father did it in 1988. Indeed, conservatives around the country are jumping in front of any television camera they can find to tout the plethora of reasons why it was their special interest group that pushed Bush over the edge. The inundation of media coverage to these facts has been so pervasive that one cannot turn on the television, nor read news nor surf on the internet, without suffering from a barrage of pundits who each offer their own not-so-original take on the presidential election. But I am not here to complain about the media, nor am I here to complain about the results of the election. If nothing else, we can take solace in the fact that for the first time in eight years, democracy worked. To the victor go the spoils.
I do find it difficult to swallow the so-called mandate that president and his followers seem to think he has. There are numerous problems with the mere idea that someone who garnered only 51% of the vote has a clear statement from the American people to pursue an agenda that less than 25% of the population fully supports. Don't get me wrong, Bush will win quite a few battles in his pursuit to conservatize the nation – if only for the fact that his party has a majority in Congress and he doesn't have another office to run for. But to presume a mandate is a stretch at best.
A quick look at some election data shows that indeed Bush's mandate, isn't so mandated. In fact, except for larger urban areas where Bush was pounded by Kerry and the large expanses of the prairie-west that, while are also less populated, went soundly for Bush, the country is, and remains, very "purple" (or at least mauve). It indicates that the country is still very split, and is still very moderate. If anything, the country mandates that Bush move to the middle. After all, very nearly half of the country thinks he did a poor job in his first term. All of the data indicates that they didn't vote for Bush because he wasn't conservative enough.
The most dangerous assertion that is being made on a daily basis is that the so-called "Born Again Evangelicals" are solely responsible for Bush's victory. It took very little time for Bob Jones to close the gap between himself and the president after more than four years of estrangement. In his "Congratulatory Letter To George W. Bush" he claimed, " In your re-election, God has graciously granted America—though she doesn't deserve it—a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly. Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you." Whatever world Bob Jones lives in, it isn't one anchored in reality. If nothing else, it is a slap in the face to the 77% of the population who don't identify themselves as "Born Again/Evangelical" much less the 21% of those who do identify themselves as such and still voted for Kerry.
Many pundits have attributed the "success" of "Born Agains" as a voter block to the inclusion of "Same Sex Marriage Ban Amendments" on the ballot of 11 states. Karl Rove is praised for his foresight in anticipating the power of social conservatives in this regard. Yet, even Andrew Sullivan disputes the effect that they had on these states. In the end, Evangelicals had roughly the same impact as other voter blocks around the nation, perhaps less so when you consider that the largest voting blocks of Evangelicals were in states that were "red" anyway (their chief help in these areas being expanding an already double digit Bush lead). However, if we are to assume that Rove (Bush) used this strategy to great effect, then perhaps Howard Dean had the best analysis. In a speech at Northwestern University (as quoted in truthout.org), he stated:
"The truth is the president of the United States used the same device that Slobodan Milosevic used in Serbia. When you appeal to homophobia, when you appeal to sexism, when you appeal to racism, that is extraordinarily damaging to the country," Dean charged. "I know George Bush. I served with him for six years [as a fellow governor]. He's not a homophobe. He's not a racist. He's not a sexist. In some ways, what he did was worse ... because he knew better."It seems to me that we have an obligation in this society to not allow those few people who labor with fringe ideas but who happen to have the loudest voice dictate policy. It is somewhat ironic that for all of the talk of "compassionate conservatism" it is the politics division and hate that Bush, Rove and the Bush administration claim as the key to victory. Whether it is pressure to force an upstanding career politician out of an office he deserves (Arlen Specter) or revising House rules to allow an ethically challenged politician to retain his power (Tom Delay), the Bush administration must be extraordinarily careful not to assume that a win equals a "mandate." The legacy that Bush wants is not the one he will earn if he continues to move to the right and bow to religious and social zealots. Bush would do well to listen to what John Kerry had to say during the debates if he were truly interested in obtaining a mandate: no matter what your beliefs, you don't have the luxury of governing only 25% of a nation or even 51% of a nation. Bush is the leader of the whole nation and 48% of us are here to make sure he's our leader too.
Dean also criticized Bush for the ballot initiatives in 11 states calling for gay marriage to be outlawed, saying this "had only one effect, which is to appeal to homophobia and fear and gay-baiting in order to win a presidential election."
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Hopscotch Man / What Does He See
Hopscotching over the sidewalks in the town where I live,
A Vietnam vet, who is home, but can never be?
I was a hippie when he went to war. I marched around Dow Chemical
and protested and more, because they made napalm.
I wore wooden beads and headbands and rapped all night about Ghandi’s Peace.
He was a medic on the Demilitarized Zone.
What did he see? Small town boy. Middle class soldier.
What did he see?
I was graduated from college. He was discharged from war.
I found jobs, had paddy-cakes that loved me and a lover that didn’t.
He started walking.
I joined things, cleaned things, restored things. He kept on walking.
Everyday. Up and down the main street in the town where I live.
I had funerals and parties. Blue skies and sunsets. Got fat and thin and fat and thin
and fat again.
I wrote down every little thing I ever felt.
I questioned everything. Thought everything. Ignored everything. Faced everything
I cried for everything. Celebrated everything. Remembered everything.
then forgot everything.
He kept on walking. Day after day. Month after month Year after year. Decade after decade.
After decade.
I saw him again on Veteran's Day.
This small town boy. This middle class soldier.
What’s he doing? What does he see?
Shadows of his lifetime? Or shadows of one day of gore?
He has graying long hair down to his waist. Like a Friar Tuck gone amok.
He has a graying long beard, down to his waist. And he sweeps a white cane back and forth,
tap tapping as he walks
and then his feet start tip-toeing here. Sidestepping there. Hopscotching.
What does he see?
A glorious world? Does he dance the jig to commemorate the joys of life?
Or is he still in the demilitarized zone.
What does he hop over. What does he avoid?
What does he see? Step on the wrong part and you break your mother's. . .
My God.
My heart.
Hopscotching over the sidewalks in the town where I live,
A Vietnam vet, who is home, but can never be?
I was a hippie when he went to war. I marched around Dow Chemical
and protested and more, because they made napalm.
I wore wooden beads and headbands and rapped all night about Ghandi’s Peace.
He was a medic on the Demilitarized Zone.
What did he see? Small town boy. Middle class soldier.
What did he see?
I was graduated from college. He was discharged from war.
I found jobs, had paddy-cakes that loved me and a lover that didn’t.
He started walking.
I joined things, cleaned things, restored things. He kept on walking.
Everyday. Up and down the main street in the town where I live.
I had funerals and parties. Blue skies and sunsets. Got fat and thin and fat and thin
and fat again.
I wrote down every little thing I ever felt.
I questioned everything. Thought everything. Ignored everything. Faced everything
I cried for everything. Celebrated everything. Remembered everything.
then forgot everything.
He kept on walking. Day after day. Month after month Year after year. Decade after decade.
After decade.
I saw him again on Veteran's Day.
This small town boy. This middle class soldier.
What’s he doing? What does he see?
Shadows of his lifetime? Or shadows of one day of gore?
He has graying long hair down to his waist. Like a Friar Tuck gone amok.
He has a graying long beard, down to his waist. And he sweeps a white cane back and forth,
tap tapping as he walks
and then his feet start tip-toeing here. Sidestepping there. Hopscotching.
What does he see?
A glorious world? Does he dance the jig to commemorate the joys of life?
Or is he still in the demilitarized zone.
What does he hop over. What does he avoid?
What does he see? Step on the wrong part and you break your mother's. . .
My God.
My heart.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
This Week, Over the Water Cooler
Well, actually, we don’t have a water cooler at work. So let us say
"This Week, Over the Coffee Pot...."
Like the rest of you, even a week past the election, we're still discussing what went wrong for the Democrats, what went right for the Republicans, and where do we go from here -- ad nauseam.
The political reporter thinks the Democratic party must start looking to mid-America instead of focusing on New York and California. Good point. Lots of pundits say so. The sales staff thinks it is probably good for business. Looks like the stock market agrees. The union steward is red-faced furious and has been making snide comments all week. And the handful of Republicans at the paper are emailing jokes and winking behind the backs of the liberals -- although the information systems lady (the one that gets paid to tell you to re-boot) can’t contain her glee. But she has red hair and deep dimples so we let her dance around.
Personally, I think it was not so much a vote for Bush but an intellectual vote for capitalism and consumerism. We don’t have the great caste system of past years. Now anyone from any race and any neighborhood can see a future in America and they don’t want to give up that achievable dream. I also think it was too long a campaign. I think we have an emotional response to the challenger who was a nit-picking mother-in-law type, constantly nagging, constantly negating every single presidential action. It grated on our collective nerves until we unconsciously blamed the challenger for all the political ads and all the repetitive news reports.
At least that's my view. Hmm... maybe this site is my water cooler!
Well, actually, we don’t have a water cooler at work. So let us say
"This Week, Over the Coffee Pot...."
Like the rest of you, even a week past the election, we're still discussing what went wrong for the Democrats, what went right for the Republicans, and where do we go from here -- ad nauseam.
The political reporter thinks the Democratic party must start looking to mid-America instead of focusing on New York and California. Good point. Lots of pundits say so. The sales staff thinks it is probably good for business. Looks like the stock market agrees. The union steward is red-faced furious and has been making snide comments all week. And the handful of Republicans at the paper are emailing jokes and winking behind the backs of the liberals -- although the information systems lady (the one that gets paid to tell you to re-boot) can’t contain her glee. But she has red hair and deep dimples so we let her dance around.
Personally, I think it was not so much a vote for Bush but an intellectual vote for capitalism and consumerism. We don’t have the great caste system of past years. Now anyone from any race and any neighborhood can see a future in America and they don’t want to give up that achievable dream. I also think it was too long a campaign. I think we have an emotional response to the challenger who was a nit-picking mother-in-law type, constantly nagging, constantly negating every single presidential action. It grated on our collective nerves until we unconsciously blamed the challenger for all the political ads and all the repetitive news reports.
At least that's my view. Hmm... maybe this site is my water cooler!
Monday, November 08, 2004
Election Reflections
In Ohio, we discovered much about ourselves this election. We like to kill little animals, we talk funny, and we have a limited understanding of complex issues. Amazingly to both parties, we actually did vote and were even able to overcome those chads.
My family was split between parties and all had strong opinions, and I thought politics would be put aside now that the elections were over. Ha! A recent string of emails predicting the gloom and doom of another four years of Bush got me thinking in a different direction. Instead of focusing on what the federal government is not doing with our hard earned tax dollars, maybe we should focus on what it should be doing.
I, for one, do not believe there is enough money, even in the Kerry-Heinz bank accounts, to pay for all our pet projects, wars, running the government, social security -- the list goes on. So what is the answer? Something that no politician wants to do: discuss the specific purposes of the Federal government, State governments, and Local governments. (We may never reach a consensus, but what could at least focus on what we all agree is important, and base funding on that.)
I think the Local government's first responsibility is to supply police and fire protection. That makes it easy during budget time. Projects to beautify the downtown, trips oversees to trump up business, leaf pickup will all take a back seat to the primary responsibility to provide protection. I am not saying that other uses of "my" money are not important, but that they can only be funded after the primary purposes have as much money as they truly need. Next we go the State. Funding education has to be a primary State responsibility, and that means education can never be the first thing to be cut. I remember the state legislators voting in some new projects, when the budget was already used up. They said after listening to the project pitches, they sounded worthwhile. Well, duh. I could make a project to study Michigan's black flies sound worthwhile, but so what? Spending should be viewed in the context of how it contributes to the primary purposes of government, and just like in Local government budgeting, you can’t spend money on less important issues until the most important ones have all the money they need.
And the Federal government? I believe it is to protect America, to protect and uphold the constitution and guarantee those freedoms, and only then work with and support local and state governments. Just as I believe the reporter's job is to report the news and not to make the news, and the Judiciary’s responsibility is to interpret the laws and not make new laws, I believe the government's job is to protect, secure, promote freedom, guarantee basic rights, but not to determine who gets those rights, determine who gets to profit financially (this year), and who gets their pet projects funded. It doesn’t mean the pet projects aren’t interesting – only that they can’t be funded a single dollar until the government’s primary purposes are taken care of.
I hear about the winners and losers in this election. The winners are the people who were able to vote without fear of violence. The losers are the ones who expect the government to be all things to all people.
In Ohio, we discovered much about ourselves this election. We like to kill little animals, we talk funny, and we have a limited understanding of complex issues. Amazingly to both parties, we actually did vote and were even able to overcome those chads.
My family was split between parties and all had strong opinions, and I thought politics would be put aside now that the elections were over. Ha! A recent string of emails predicting the gloom and doom of another four years of Bush got me thinking in a different direction. Instead of focusing on what the federal government is not doing with our hard earned tax dollars, maybe we should focus on what it should be doing.
I, for one, do not believe there is enough money, even in the Kerry-Heinz bank accounts, to pay for all our pet projects, wars, running the government, social security -- the list goes on. So what is the answer? Something that no politician wants to do: discuss the specific purposes of the Federal government, State governments, and Local governments. (We may never reach a consensus, but what could at least focus on what we all agree is important, and base funding on that.)
I think the Local government's first responsibility is to supply police and fire protection. That makes it easy during budget time. Projects to beautify the downtown, trips oversees to trump up business, leaf pickup will all take a back seat to the primary responsibility to provide protection. I am not saying that other uses of "my" money are not important, but that they can only be funded after the primary purposes have as much money as they truly need. Next we go the State. Funding education has to be a primary State responsibility, and that means education can never be the first thing to be cut. I remember the state legislators voting in some new projects, when the budget was already used up. They said after listening to the project pitches, they sounded worthwhile. Well, duh. I could make a project to study Michigan's black flies sound worthwhile, but so what? Spending should be viewed in the context of how it contributes to the primary purposes of government, and just like in Local government budgeting, you can’t spend money on less important issues until the most important ones have all the money they need.
And the Federal government? I believe it is to protect America, to protect and uphold the constitution and guarantee those freedoms, and only then work with and support local and state governments. Just as I believe the reporter's job is to report the news and not to make the news, and the Judiciary’s responsibility is to interpret the laws and not make new laws, I believe the government's job is to protect, secure, promote freedom, guarantee basic rights, but not to determine who gets those rights, determine who gets to profit financially (this year), and who gets their pet projects funded. It doesn’t mean the pet projects aren’t interesting – only that they can’t be funded a single dollar until the government’s primary purposes are taken care of.
I hear about the winners and losers in this election. The winners are the people who were able to vote without fear of violence. The losers are the ones who expect the government to be all things to all people.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
The Lesson
Right now, every Democratic strategist in the nation is going over mounds of polling data, trying to figure out how in the hell they lost so badly. Senator Charles Schumer was on the Daily Show tonight, summing up his party's frustration:
As we know, all 11 state proposals banning gay marriage not only passed, but by dramatic margins. I'm not quite sure I agree that those initiatives were completely responsible for Bush's victory, since the bans were mostly in solid pro-Bush territory, and passed overwhelmingly even in states Kerry won handily like Oregon and Michigan. But in Ohio, which voted for the most severe ban of them all (banning not only gay marriage but also gay civil unions and anything intending "to approximate" a marriage benefit), those concerned Christians could have made all the difference. (The irony is that Kerry didn't even support gay marriage -- but remember it's not that voters thought he did, but that the issue itself lured more conservatives to the polls in the first place.)
I also don't agree that Bush supporters are necessarily anti-gay. Of people who support gay civil unions, for example, the public was evenly divided between Bush and Kerry. And, even after supporting a constitutional ban on gay marriage this time around, Bush's support among gay Americans stayed the same, at about 25%.
On sensitive issues, you have to take the time to convince people, not just ram new ideas down their throats. It took decades for interracial marriages to become legal and accepted -- you can't just flip an entire country's viewpoint on gay marriage in a couple of years, no matter how high Will and Grace's Nielsens are. We're not ready yet. Bush is in the mainstream on this one -- start with civil unions, let the states decide their own laws, and we'll ease into it. It's not about what's "right" if fighting for it all at once sets you back instead of forward. State after state is now banning not only gay marriage, but even unions like marriage or allowing any benefits of marriage. Imagine if there was a major national push to legalize all illegal drugs, even the hard stuff, and maybe a state or two had actually done it. The anti-drugs majority might get panicked, and respond with a sweeping bill that increased drug possession fines and mandatory jailtime, which would pass overwhelmingly. Rather than helping their cause, the activists hurt it deeply, because they tried to force the extreme of a minority position on people before they were ready. Again, it's not about whether gay marriage should be legal (I strongly support it myself). This is a Democracy -- you don't get to skip over the "winning minds" part.
But it's more than just "the gay thing". Bush won on values because the Democratic party in recent years has moved far to the left, while the American people have stayed relatively the same. For example, according to Gallup, year after year a full 50% of this country is pro-life, and yet the Democratic party now literally refuses to support any pro-life Democrats. They've publicly ridiculed pro-God and pro-gun people as a small, backward portion of the electorate, oblivious to the fact that they're insulting the vast majority of the electorate. This is what Zell Miller warned about in "A National Party No More", and this election might just force the Dems into taking his arguments a little more seriously. (Hey, he might be nuts, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.)
If everyone you surround yourself with believes a certain thing, it becomes self-reinforcing. By kicking out all dissenting opinion in their ranks, the Dems started believing they represented the mainstream. How many times did you hear this election that Bush was "ultra-conservative", or even "the most right-wing President ever"? Think about how ludicrous that is: Bush is demonstrably more moderate than his father, and way more moderate than Reagan or Nixon -- to say nothing of Republicans like Hastert and Delay. Hell, popular conservative commentators such as Limbaugh and Hannity and Savage complain daily and in detail that Bush is far too liberal. But the Democrats didn't see this. They were in their bubble where everyone believes as they do, and so those who disagree must be in the minority. The Republicans had this problem a little after Newt's "Republican Revolution", when they took it as a mandate to shift rightward. But after Dole's defeat, they moved centrist, and now they're the only "big tent" left. Some of the nation's most popular Republicans such as Giuliani, Powell and Schwarzenegger would have stood out as exceptions only a decade ago; now they're the public mainstream face of the party. Think about it -- any of us could easy rattle off 10-20 popular moderate Republicans, but how many moderate Democrats could you name? 1? 2?
And they wonder why they keep losing elections.
Bush won more votes than any candidate in American history on Tuesday, and by a decisive margin of 4 million votes (3.5%) over his opponent. Not a "landslide", of course, but consider that Clinton's "landslide" in 1992 was only by 5.5 million votes (5.5%) over Bush's father. And what's particularly striking about today's polling is that only 38% of Americans say they were upset with Kerry's defeat! Talk about weak support -- more than a quarter of Kerry's own voters are kinda glad it didn't go their way? Wow.
The bottom line: the Democratic Party needs to move back to the center if they want to reconnect with the American voter. They have to stop scaring away conservative Democrats to the Republican side. They have to allow pro-life Democrats again. They have to fund candidates who agree with the majority of Democratic ideals, even if they happen to be pro-Jesus or pro-gun. As crazy old Zell would say, they have to go back to being a "national party"; they can't just keep writing off the South.
I happen to believe the Democrats are right on a hell of a lot of progressive issues. But they'll never get to do anything about them if they keep losing power. Moving back to the center will let them win elections again, and then be in a position to, in time, win over the minds of the public and change the country for the better. Right now, they're setting their own ideals back by decades, and without the ability for balanced dialog and debate, we all lose.
Right now, every Democratic strategist in the nation is going over mounds of polling data, trying to figure out how in the hell they lost so badly. Senator Charles Schumer was on the Daily Show tonight, summing up his party's frustration:
When people say the country's moving in the wrong direction, they think the Iraq war is a mess, the economy isn't good, and we still lose...?He's right -- even in the exit polls, on many of the big topics we've been talking about, voters narrowly agreed with Kerry. But the top "most important issue" was "values" -- and of the voters who listed values as their primary concern, Bush won 80%-18%. (By "values", of course, the voters seem to mean Christian values, since Bush won churchgoers by 61%-39%, and lost non-churchgoers 36%-62%.)
As we know, all 11 state proposals banning gay marriage not only passed, but by dramatic margins. I'm not quite sure I agree that those initiatives were completely responsible for Bush's victory, since the bans were mostly in solid pro-Bush territory, and passed overwhelmingly even in states Kerry won handily like Oregon and Michigan. But in Ohio, which voted for the most severe ban of them all (banning not only gay marriage but also gay civil unions and anything intending "to approximate" a marriage benefit), those concerned Christians could have made all the difference. (The irony is that Kerry didn't even support gay marriage -- but remember it's not that voters thought he did, but that the issue itself lured more conservatives to the polls in the first place.)
I also don't agree that Bush supporters are necessarily anti-gay. Of people who support gay civil unions, for example, the public was evenly divided between Bush and Kerry. And, even after supporting a constitutional ban on gay marriage this time around, Bush's support among gay Americans stayed the same, at about 25%.
On sensitive issues, you have to take the time to convince people, not just ram new ideas down their throats. It took decades for interracial marriages to become legal and accepted -- you can't just flip an entire country's viewpoint on gay marriage in a couple of years, no matter how high Will and Grace's Nielsens are. We're not ready yet. Bush is in the mainstream on this one -- start with civil unions, let the states decide their own laws, and we'll ease into it. It's not about what's "right" if fighting for it all at once sets you back instead of forward. State after state is now banning not only gay marriage, but even unions like marriage or allowing any benefits of marriage. Imagine if there was a major national push to legalize all illegal drugs, even the hard stuff, and maybe a state or two had actually done it. The anti-drugs majority might get panicked, and respond with a sweeping bill that increased drug possession fines and mandatory jailtime, which would pass overwhelmingly. Rather than helping their cause, the activists hurt it deeply, because they tried to force the extreme of a minority position on people before they were ready. Again, it's not about whether gay marriage should be legal (I strongly support it myself). This is a Democracy -- you don't get to skip over the "winning minds" part.
But it's more than just "the gay thing". Bush won on values because the Democratic party in recent years has moved far to the left, while the American people have stayed relatively the same. For example, according to Gallup, year after year a full 50% of this country is pro-life, and yet the Democratic party now literally refuses to support any pro-life Democrats. They've publicly ridiculed pro-God and pro-gun people as a small, backward portion of the electorate, oblivious to the fact that they're insulting the vast majority of the electorate. This is what Zell Miller warned about in "A National Party No More", and this election might just force the Dems into taking his arguments a little more seriously. (Hey, he might be nuts, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.)
If everyone you surround yourself with believes a certain thing, it becomes self-reinforcing. By kicking out all dissenting opinion in their ranks, the Dems started believing they represented the mainstream. How many times did you hear this election that Bush was "ultra-conservative", or even "the most right-wing President ever"? Think about how ludicrous that is: Bush is demonstrably more moderate than his father, and way more moderate than Reagan or Nixon -- to say nothing of Republicans like Hastert and Delay. Hell, popular conservative commentators such as Limbaugh and Hannity and Savage complain daily and in detail that Bush is far too liberal. But the Democrats didn't see this. They were in their bubble where everyone believes as they do, and so those who disagree must be in the minority. The Republicans had this problem a little after Newt's "Republican Revolution", when they took it as a mandate to shift rightward. But after Dole's defeat, they moved centrist, and now they're the only "big tent" left. Some of the nation's most popular Republicans such as Giuliani, Powell and Schwarzenegger would have stood out as exceptions only a decade ago; now they're the public mainstream face of the party. Think about it -- any of us could easy rattle off 10-20 popular moderate Republicans, but how many moderate Democrats could you name? 1? 2?
And they wonder why they keep losing elections.
Bush won more votes than any candidate in American history on Tuesday, and by a decisive margin of 4 million votes (3.5%) over his opponent. Not a "landslide", of course, but consider that Clinton's "landslide" in 1992 was only by 5.5 million votes (5.5%) over Bush's father. And what's particularly striking about today's polling is that only 38% of Americans say they were upset with Kerry's defeat! Talk about weak support -- more than a quarter of Kerry's own voters are kinda glad it didn't go their way? Wow.
The bottom line: the Democratic Party needs to move back to the center if they want to reconnect with the American voter. They have to stop scaring away conservative Democrats to the Republican side. They have to allow pro-life Democrats again. They have to fund candidates who agree with the majority of Democratic ideals, even if they happen to be pro-Jesus or pro-gun. As crazy old Zell would say, they have to go back to being a "national party"; they can't just keep writing off the South.
I happen to believe the Democrats are right on a hell of a lot of progressive issues. But they'll never get to do anything about them if they keep losing power. Moving back to the center will let them win elections again, and then be in a position to, in time, win over the minds of the public and change the country for the better. Right now, they're setting their own ideals back by decades, and without the ability for balanced dialog and debate, we all lose.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Time to Decide: Part Three
I feel for the Canadians and Brits and Germans and Africans and Asians and Middle Easterners and all outsiders. I know what it is like to be an outsider. I am a Suburban Detroiter. I have to watch the city dwellers elect the Mayor of Detroit when I am one of the many that will have to pay for their decisions. I had to watch decades of a corrupt mayor being reelected while my State taxes kept rising to pay for his frivolities. Then I watched a mayor turn on the welfare of his own people in the name of fantastic greed and power, selling the city’s very soul to the interests of Vegas/Mafia-type casinos. And now–they have elected a party-guy who wears a bigger diamond earring then ever adorned Liz Taylor. Detroit controls how we in the suburbs will live, in fact, Detroit controls much of how the whole State lives and how the rest of the nation views us. But no one lets us vote for the mayor.
In the same way, they watch me vote for president. How will I pick one?
I am looking for a president who can give everyone a sufficiently well-paying job that wants to work and let people live off the land that want to live off the land.
I am looking for a president that will let me spend the fruits of my labor my own way even if I want to spend it foolishly. I am willing to accept the consequences for my decisions.
I am looking for a president that will NOT create a huge welfare society and then threaten the recipients with starvation at every turn.
I want a president that will not force me to bare the burdens of my neighbor’s follies, like those who wasted their money at the casinos or on designer clothes or on booze.
I am looking for a president that trusts the States to handle that which belongs to the States, and trusts the Counties to handle that which belongs to the Counties. A president that will not interfere unless the health or well being of our citizenry is in jeopardy.
The more I think of it, the less I believe in Socialism or Communism. In fact, those forms of society don’t seem to work very well. Anywhere.
Sounds sort of like Bush will get my vote. But that is certainly not my desire.
I sure do hate to vote for someone that thinks other countries would be better off if they were like us. I can’t help it! That phrase "fascist pig" still beats hard in my soul. I believe in the Federation’s prime directive of non-interference of primitive societies. And most of these primitive societies are much older than we. I believe in heeding the lessons of history. I believe in the words of this great song:
http://www.steppenwolf.com/lyr/mnnster.html
Choose well, my fellow voters. And take heart. Our selection, for better or for worse, will only last for four years. God keep us all.
I feel for the Canadians and Brits and Germans and Africans and Asians and Middle Easterners and all outsiders. I know what it is like to be an outsider. I am a Suburban Detroiter. I have to watch the city dwellers elect the Mayor of Detroit when I am one of the many that will have to pay for their decisions. I had to watch decades of a corrupt mayor being reelected while my State taxes kept rising to pay for his frivolities. Then I watched a mayor turn on the welfare of his own people in the name of fantastic greed and power, selling the city’s very soul to the interests of Vegas/Mafia-type casinos. And now–they have elected a party-guy who wears a bigger diamond earring then ever adorned Liz Taylor. Detroit controls how we in the suburbs will live, in fact, Detroit controls much of how the whole State lives and how the rest of the nation views us. But no one lets us vote for the mayor.
In the same way, they watch me vote for president. How will I pick one?
I am looking for a president who can give everyone a sufficiently well-paying job that wants to work and let people live off the land that want to live off the land.
I am looking for a president that will let me spend the fruits of my labor my own way even if I want to spend it foolishly. I am willing to accept the consequences for my decisions.
I am looking for a president that will NOT create a huge welfare society and then threaten the recipients with starvation at every turn.
I want a president that will not force me to bare the burdens of my neighbor’s follies, like those who wasted their money at the casinos or on designer clothes or on booze.
I am looking for a president that trusts the States to handle that which belongs to the States, and trusts the Counties to handle that which belongs to the Counties. A president that will not interfere unless the health or well being of our citizenry is in jeopardy.
The more I think of it, the less I believe in Socialism or Communism. In fact, those forms of society don’t seem to work very well. Anywhere.
Sounds sort of like Bush will get my vote. But that is certainly not my desire.
I sure do hate to vote for someone that thinks other countries would be better off if they were like us. I can’t help it! That phrase "fascist pig" still beats hard in my soul. I believe in the Federation’s prime directive of non-interference of primitive societies. And most of these primitive societies are much older than we. I believe in heeding the lessons of history. I believe in the words of this great song:
http://www.steppenwolf.com/lyr/mnnster.html
Choose well, my fellow voters. And take heart. Our selection, for better or for worse, will only last for four years. God keep us all.
