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What a woman wants By Julian Delasantellis
Instead of God Bless
America
, why weren't the townspeople singing Happy Days are Here Again,
Franklin D Roosevelt's 1932 campaign theme song, played faithfully at most
Democratic party rallies since?
But what the Democrats and the liberals couldn't get, the Republicans and the
conservatives picked up instantly. With perception and marketing skills honed
by their long years as corporate advertising executives, they saw that the
townspeople in the little towns of The Deer Hunter, and in thousands of
others that had been sheared away from the Roosevelt coalition, were singing to
America because that was all they had, and, like a frantic suitor, they were
desperate to prove their loyalty to it.
Their lives didn't revolve around fancy houses, exotic trips to far-off
lands, or bulging stock portfolios. What they could say that they had, what
they guarded with jealousy, was their perception as first in line as America's
lover. They could prove it, too; like the Old Testament story of God asking
Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, look how many of their sons they had willingly
sacrificed at their Master's call.
It was the genius of the Republican polling and image spinmeisters that turned
this ill-formed and relatively inchoate patriotism into powerful "wedge" issues
they could use against the Democrats. From about this period on, whenever the
Democrats advanced a reform issue that might improve the lives of average
Americans, such as health care, income support for the poor, an increased
minimum wages, and many others, the Republicans told this population that, if
the Democrats really loved America as much as they said they did, why would
they be trying so hard to change it?
Perhaps the key point of this strategy, the factor that truly led to its
success with the white working class, was that, indeed, it only worked with
middle- and lower-income whites, not African Americans. That population
continued to vote as reliably Democrat as any other component of the Roosevelt
coalition of the 1930s - yet which African-Americans were not part of as racial
oppression and intimidation had essentially kept African-Americans out of the
ballot booth until the late 1960s.
But the reliable patronage of the Democrats by African Americans was a key part
of the appeal of the Republicans to middle- and lower-class whites. The
"blacks" (in private conversations, they were called much worse) may be
benefiting from all these welfare, racial preference in hiring, and
income-support programs, but we white people don't need them; "We’ll pull
ourselves up by our own bootstraps."
The Democrats could never really understand this; in essence, lower- and
middle-class white voters were punishing them for advocacy of programs to help
them.
Along with hostility by traditionally minded lower- and middle-class whites to
the agents of social upheaval and dislocation of the 1960s, the spoiled, rich
college kid "hippies", a name was soon developed for this class of voter who
cast ballots against their own economic interests, who voted to give upper
income capitalists and business owners benefits they themselves could never use
- they were the "values voters".
The exploitation of the grudges and prejudices of the "values voter" completely
annihilated the old Roosevelt coalition, and it led to the last 40 years being
a period as dominated by Republicans as the middle of the 20th century was by
the Democrats. The Republican Party has won seven of the 10 presidential
elections since 1964, and every time, this appeal to "values" over economic
interest has been a key part of their campaign strategy.
During this time, the rise of fundamentalist Protestantism acted as another
incentive for lower middle-class whites to turn away from the Democrats.
Contrasting diametrically with the left wing "liberation theology" of the
1960s, these congregations were both super patriotic and ultra traditional; of
what use was the Democrats' appeal to a better life in this world, when just by
sitting in the pews and tithing (that is, donating to the church) eternal bliss
in the afterlife was assured?
In 2004, in the midst of the unpopular Iraq War, and in an economy then still
growing very slowly (the dramatic effects of the housing bubble blowoff would
only be seen in the following two years), and after nominating a genuine war
hero in the person of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic Party still got
rejected and drubbed by these white, "values voters".
The transition from the pattern set by McKinley and Hanna was complete. George
W Bush's Republicans, the party clearly working to serve the interests of big
business and big money, had now become the party that was winning elections
solely with the votes of lower-income whites; in that election the Republicans
won 18 of the 19 lowest income states in the nation. The average income of the
19 states won by the Democrats was US$49,770; for the Republicans, $41,598.
The American left-wing intelligentsia searched desperately for answers. One
came from social historian Thomas Frank, in his book, What's the Matter with
Kansas - How the Conservatives Won the Heart of America.
In a New York Times 2004 essay, Frank explained the trick:
For more
than three decades, the Republican Party has relied on the ''culture war'' to
rescue their chances every four years, from Richard Nixon's campaign against
the liberal news media to George H W Bush's campaign against the liberal
flag-burners. In this culture war, the real divide is between ''regular
people'' and an endlessly scheming ''liberal elite.'' This strategy allows them
to depict themselves as friends of the common people even as they gut workplace
safety rules and lay plans to turn Social Security over to Wall Street. Most
important, it has allowed Republicans to speak the language of populism ... Our
age-old folkways, in other words, are today under siege from a cabal of
know-it-all elites. The common people are being trampled by the intellectuals.
This is precisely the same formula that was used, to great effect, in the nasty
spat over evolution that Kansans endured in 1999, in which the elitists said to
be forcing their views on the unassuming world were biology professors and
those scheming paleontologists.
It is interesting that in
Kansas it was the fight against the teaching of evolution that drove the common
people to the Republicans. In 1925, in the famous Tennessee "Scopes Monkey
Trial", high-school teacher John Scopes was put on trial for teaching
evolution. The prosecutor in the trial was the famed populist William Jennings
Bryan, defeated by McKinley in the 1896 presidential elections. The shift of
populism from an ideology that had found a home in the American Left, to one
claimed by the Right, is the essence of the motivation of the values voter, the
foot soldier in the trenches of America's now-raging "Culture War".
George W's revolution
Early 2005 was as dark a time for the Democratic Party and the left in America
as the time following the Goldwater defeat was for conservatives 40 years
earlier. With his election victory George W Bush made clear his intention to
continue and intensify the free-market, big business revolution; the first step
in that cause would be the privatization of Franklin Roosevelt's most durable
gem from the New Deal - the Social Security program of old-age income support.
But like a sorcerer's apprentice who can start his magic but does not know how
to stop it, the right wing's appeal to the values voter had a very curious side
effect. In winning the poor, they lost the rich. This became obvious in the
Democrats' retaking of Congress in 2006. If you find a very pricey, tony
address in America these days, there's a good chance it's represented by a
Democrat.
In the 10 wealthiest states in America, Democrats outnumber Republicans in the
House of Representatives' delegations of these states by 69 to 39, as opposed
to a 30-22 advantage by the Republicans in the 10 poorest states.
Manhattan zip code 10012, which reported an average income of just under $2.4
million on its 294 tax returns, is represented by Democrats Jerrold Nadler and
Nydia Velazquez. Even Beverly Hills, California, with its famous 90210 postal
code, is represented by Henry Waxman and Howard Berman, both Democrats.
The Democrat support by the rich and upper middle class is the mirror image of
the Republican support by the white poor. While the poor seek to cling to
tradition in the face of a changing and uncertain future, those better off
reject it; they are open to all the limitless possibilities that their
imagination can think of and their abundant wallets can finance.
They want to be able to buy a book and choose from something other than the
wide selection of bibles at a Christian book store, go to the theatre to see
something other than Passion Play, hear a concert other than a Messiah,
go out to dinner and dine on something other than franks n' beans in the church
basement. They want to know that they'll face no social, or even legal,
sanction, sleeping in instead of going to church on Sunday mornings. Perhaps
most of all, if a loved one faces the end of life, they want the decisions for
his care to be made by the family, not by a posse of Bible-thumping preachers
riding shotgun with the National Republican Party, as happened in 2005 with the
Terry Schiavo case in Florida.
In this year's American presidential primaries, it is Senator Barack Obama that
is garnering most of the support from this new class. It was this group that
was the core of his remarkable string of victories from the Iowa caucus to just
after the Super Tuesday primaries on February 4, and polls show that, in a
matchup with Republican nominee John McCain, he would overwhelmingly carry the
votes of college-educated, high-income professionals. In this week's Oregon
presidential primary, Obama beat Hillary Clinton among those earning
$100,000-$150,000 by 67 to 32. In Kentucky, a state with one of the highest
proportions of non-college graduates in the country, Clinton got the "values
voters" and reversed these numbers.
Just as Obama was about to decisively clinch the Democratic Party nomination
for president, a very unexpected phenomenon showed itself. Clinton began to
display a remarkable strength among the lower-income values voters. It was
particularly symbolic that the core of her support seemed to be centered in a
roughly 200-kilometer arc around Western Pennsylvania, the very are that
symbolized white lower income angst in The Deer Hunter.
In rapid succession, Clinton won Democratic primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana,
landslide wins in both West Virginia and Kentucky. A core weakness of her
campaign has been her inability to postulate a clear, convincing rationale for
her quest for the presidency (other than the obvious and unspoken one that her
entire campaign is nothing more than a desperate attempt to validate an
identity as something other than the betrayed wife of a philandering husband).
Her recent support is providing her one. To quote the song by John Lennon,
Hillary is the self-appointed, new, "working class hero".
As Obama has not, as of this writing, been able finally to garner enough
pledged delegates to guarantee the nomination, Clinton is presenting the
Democratic Party with a very challenging argument.
In essence, she is saying that her support in these states proves that she can
go back, and, in effect, round up the stragglers; she can regain the support of
the lower-income white voters the party lost in 1968, and has had great
difficulty in luring back ever since. As such, she is arguing that the party
should - actually, it must - ignore the results of the 47 states that have
completed their nominee selection process, one that has put Obama on the cusp
of victory, and choose - more accurately, anoint - her as the Democratic
Party's nominee.
In presidential elections, American states are now divided into three distinct
categories. "Red" states are the ones, like Texas, South Carolina and most of
the Great Plains, that will almost certainly vote Republican. "Blue" states,
like New York, Massachusetts and California, can be relied on to deliver their
votes for the Democrats. In between are the states where the race will actually
be decided, the so called "purple" states.
On the surface of it, Clinton has shown impressive strength in some purple
states, beating Obama in, besides the above, New Jersey, Arkansas and New
Mexico. If, as the nominee, she could deliver these states, as well as the
entire Western Pennsylvania arc, a Democratic landslide could be in the offing.
But if she becomes the nominee, can she do that? Clinton supporters argue that,
in the states where she has won, exit polls have shown that her supporters will
vote for McCain if Obama is the nominee; what they don't say is that those same
exit polls also show that a lot of Hillary's own voters plan to vote for McCain
even if she is on the ticket. Also, this argument ignores Obama's wins in his
own purple states: Nevada, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Maine, Virginia - all with white, working classes of their own that Obama did
win.
Also left unspoken in the Clinton argument is the question of what will happen
to the African-American vote if this population comes to believe that the first
African-American to fairly earn a major party's nomination was denied his prize
by the insidious machinations of hidden party insiders.
If Clinton is "given" a nomination she did not earn, would not the party be
risking the millions of votes of its most loyal constituency to try to catch
the questionable fancy of a group it lost a long time ago? The same argument
can be made with the party's new upper-income and young supporters. They came
to the Democrats disillusioned with the politics of the past; will they stick
around to support a candidate from the last century, fighting over and over
again that era's interminable culture wars?
I think again of my friend's pass at the pretty white girl from South Boston.
Such vehement, vitriolic hatred, and now, Senator Clinton thinks she can
overcome it through just the power of the pantsuit?
It's not like the Democrats haven't been trying. The party's platform is almost
unrecognizable from a quarter of a century ago; gone is advocacy of gun
control, abolition of capital punishment, welfare payments to the poor, a
non-interventionist foreign policy, and many other liberal traditions. Still,
the values voters intended to be attracted by these policy shifts return to the
party's fold all too reluctantly, if at all.
At its core, perhaps it is just pure racism and ignorance that keeps the
"values voter" from voting his or her economic self-interest.
But, as evolution proves, any group that refuses to look after its interests is
doomed to extinction. In not getting the education to compete in a globalized
workforce, by desperately trying to cling on to manual employment that can be
done at one-fifth of the wage in China or India, the white working class is
becoming ever smaller with each election cycle.
Far more important is the nation's burgeoning Hispanic population. Obama has
problems with them as well, but fortunately for the Democrats, the hard-right,
talk-radio base of the Republican Party, in recently demonizing the Hispanic
population to an extent not seen since Nazi Julius Streicher did in his Der
Sturmer newspaper with Germany's Jews, has probably assured that Hispanics will
continue to vote Democrat, at least for this election.
On April 6, Obama generated controversy, and trouble for his campaign, with
these remarks to a gathering of wealthy campaign contributors outside San
Francisco. In them, he proved that he certainly understood the values voter,
even if he couldn't yet win their vote.
You go into some of these small
towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs
have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell
through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each
successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna
regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter,
they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or
anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their
frustrations.
"The truth shall set you free," US president
James Garfield said, "but, first, it will make you miserable." Obama spoke this
truth, and when these supposed private remarks were released, it did make him
miserable - the remarks were exploited by Clinton.
Clinton would have been outraged by what the girl in South Boston said to my
friend in 1975. These days, it sometimes seems that she's bucking for that
girl's job as well as the presidency .
Julian Delasantellis is a management consultant, private investor and
educator in international business in the US state of Washington. He can be
reached at juliandelasantellis@yahoo.com.
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