The Liberal Gloat

New York Times ^ | November 17, 2012 | Ross Douthat

[reaganaut1]

WINNING an election doesn’t just offer the chance to govern the country. It offers a chance to feel morally and intellectually superior to the party you’ve just beaten. This is an inescapable aspect of democratic culture: no matter what reason tells us about the vagaries of politics, something in the American subconscious assumes that the voice of the people really is the voice of God, and that being part of a winning coalition must be a sign that you’re His chosen one as well.

This means the losing coalition must be doomed to wander east of Eden, and liberals have been having a good time with this idea of late. “Those poor, benighted Republicans!” runs the subtext of their postelection commentary. “They can’t read polls! They can’t reach Hispanics! They don’t understand women! They don’t have a team of Silicon Valley sorcerers running their turnout operations!”

Back in 2011, the Obama White House earned some mild mockery for its “win the future” slogan. But now that the president has been re-elected, the liberal conventional wisdom is that the Democrats have done just that — that Republicans are now Radio Shack to their Apple store, “The Waltons” to their “Modern Family,” a mediocre Norman Rockwell to their digital-age mosaic.

Maybe it’s too soon to pierce this cloud of postelection smugness. But in the spirit of friendly correction — or, O.K., maybe curmudgeonly annoyance — let me point out some slightly more unpleasant truths about the future that liberalism seems to be winning.

Liberals look at the Obama majority and see a coalition bound together by enlightened values — reason rather than superstition, tolerance rather than bigotry, equality rather than hierarchy. But it’s just as easy to see a coalition created by social disintegration and unified by economic fear.

[cripplecreek]

Liberals look at the Obama majority and see a coalition bound together by enlightened values — reason rather than superstition, tolerance rather than bigotry, equality rather than hierarchy.

I see a lot of factions that could crumble overnight with a few small wedges in just the right places

[fini]

Well, I’m surprised. This is the first NYT article that I can remember actually making me think.

[NEWwoman]

BTTT - many good points

[MuttTheHoople]

They’re not “liberals”....they’re backward Regressives.

[Yardstick]

Absolutely true that liberals benefit from disintegration and dysfunction in civil society.

[blueunicorn6]

Read the comments at the original site. Cut through all the baloney, and what do you see? Fear. The Democrat leaders are just grifters. they’re out to make themselves some money. The Democrat voters are another story. The Democrat party uses psychologists and sociologists while the Republican party uses political scientists. We can talk about demographics and voting behaviors and the effectivess of types of advertising. The Democrats play on people’s fears. Voting is a human behavior, it’s not just a tabulation of numbers.
The Democrats talk to fearful young people and minorities and women and tell them that the Republicans want to starve them and leave them ill.
The Democrats talk to young men and women and tell them that the Republicans want to enslave them with needy babies.
The Democrats talk to the frightened homosexuals and tell them that the Republicans want them to be lonely and alone.
The Democrats talk to the government employees and tell them that the Republicans want to throw them out on the street to starve to death.
When you think about what the Democrats are doing, you see that the leaders are cruel and self-serving. It’s actually quite sickening.
Look at Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs. Maslow says that as the lower needs are met, we move up his chart. The goal is to become a Self-Actualized person. I think that’s what the Republicans want. We see that as independence, strength, liberty, freedom. Do the Democrat leaders want the same thing? Would a Self-Actualized person want more government control of their life? The Democrats need to keep our citizens at the lower part of Maslow’s chart. How can they keep them there when those needs have actually been met? Fear. I call this the blueunicorn6 Addendum To Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs. You can keep people from developing and moving up to the higher stages with fear. The Democrats get people to vote for them through fear. This needs to be communicated to all.

[Busywhiskers]

They can gloat all they want, but their leader is still an imbecile and eventually they will have to confront that fact.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Republicans are the Waltons, the Democrats the Simpsons.

It's quite possible that absent voter fraud, Romney would have won a majority of the electoral votes. Whether voter fraud was extensive enough to account for Obama's popular vote plurality is harder to say, but possible.

Romney had several things going against him that may not be true next time--his Mormon religion, his diffidence about criticizing the President personally or touting his own virtues, and the fact that the rules were different for a black candidate. The first and third are not likely to be true in 2016 unless the GOP nominates Glen Beck and the 'Rats nominate Michelle.

[StormEye]

Liberal Gloat

The sun is shining brightly for them now.
But eventually it will set. Then let their lamentations begin. No one will bother to listen.

[Jyotishi]

> The sun is shining brightly for them now.

The sun never shines brightly for vote thieves, any thief.

[Bernard Marx]

I see a lot of factions that could crumble overnight with a few small wedges in just the right places

I do too. But I hope you're not assuming the Republicans have the wit and skill to exploit them.

[Gene Eric]

>> I see a lot of factions that could crumble overnight with a few small wedges in just the right places

bttt

[Venturer]

Let them gloat.

We are all in the same boat. When I sink , they sink, only I know it’s coming, and can prepare.

[cripplecreek]

I do too. But I hope you're not assuming the Republicans have the wit and skill to exploit them.

They may not but we do and I think we're on our own in this one.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

There are a number of things I disagree with in the article.

First of all, these kinds of nuances do not matter to a party dedicated to winning by any means possible. The country is either at or just beyond the tipping point or it isn’t, and no opinion other than the collective, voting opinion makes any difference.

“What unites all of these stories is the growing failure of America’s local associations — civic, familial, religious — to foster stability, encourage solidarity and make mobility possible.”

I don’t put all of those “associations” into one pot. That these things are failing is probably true. That the people who relish, wallow in, or fete their failure look to the Dems as their salvation is the tragedy. As others have pointed out, 0bama is bad enough, but the disaster is that voters voted to re-elect such a sub-mediocre candidate in such a sub-mediocre economy and with so many other indications of dismal competence if not outright criminality if not treason. FOR THE FIRST TIME, there is comfort and ratification in these failings. Indeed, it is almost like a cloak that is being eagerly donned. We used to root for the little guy, the underdog, but now we root for the heavy hand of big brother and worship its powers, right or wrong. This has NEVER been the case before. The US has been the upstart, the sassy rebel who had cleverness and guts on its side. And if that is now dead, then there is little to do but to stand aside and let the forces work their voodoo until there isn’t anything to argue about any more. Maybe, with a fourth of the population in breadlines 2-3 years from now, some will wake up and stop blaming GWBush. Then, the Repubs may stand a chance for reconsideration. But at that point, indeed, well before, I don’t see much chance of a salvageable country existing. We’ll go right into Sovietism and be very lucky if we can eventually back things off to Swedenism. The US has never been a country that has so embraced rank failure and leadership malfeasance. Now it seems like it’s the “in” thing. I acknowledge this is a pessimistic view. But if it’s true, it is going to play out, like it or not, for as long as it takes.

[sickoflibs]

RE :” Consider the Hispanic vote. Are Democrats winning Hispanics because they put forward a more welcoming face than Republicans do — one more in keeping with America’s tradition of assimilating migrants yearning to breathe free? Yes, up to a point. But they’re also winning recent immigrants because those immigrants often aren’t assimilating successfully — or worse, are assimilating downward, thanks to rising out-of-wedlock birthrates and high dropout rates. The Democratic edge among Hispanics depends heavily on these darker trends: the weaker that families and communities are, the more necessary government support inevitably seems.
Likewise with the growing number of unmarried Americans, especially unmarried women. Yes, social issues like abortion help explain why these voters lean Democratic. But the more important explanation is that single life is generally more insecure and chaotic than married life, and single life with children — which is now commonplace for women under 30 — is almost impossible to navigate without the support the welfare state provides.
What unites all of these stories is the growing failure of America’s local associations — civic, familial, religious — to foster stability, encourage solidarity and make mobility possible.
This is a crisis that the Republican Party often badly misunderstands, casting Democratic-leaning voters as lazy moochers or spoiled children seeking “gifts” (as a certain former Republican presidential nominee would have it) rather than recognizing the reality of their economic struggles. “

This is thoughtful. The liberals are winning those groups primarily because so many of them in the US are failing and so they look to Obama/Dems/gubmnt to be their Dad/family. He says if these people were successfully functional then they wouldn't vote Dems.

And he says that Republicans/ Romney) do their best to turn them off by calling them moochers which didn't work that well this time.

[raccoonradio]

They’re not all gloating. Some are angry due to such things as the format flip of KPOJ Portland from liberal talk to sports, and KFNQ Seattle to the same thing. See some of this stuff in this liberal blog which blames KPOJ’s owner, the Clear Channel/Bain/Romney Hate Machine and the other owner,
the CBS Hate Machine

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9729

>>That’s exactly what Clear Channel did when they replaced the popular Stephanie Miller Show with the rightwing Glenn Beck program on San Francisco’s progressive Green 960 earlier this year, despite his much lower ratings in the same time slot, on the same station, ever since...While Rightwing talk radio is allowed to propagandize over our public airwaves in favor of supposed “free-market” competition, there is no such free-market competition in the talk radio business itself.

A comment:
>>Bain Capital makes a mockery of capitalism - buying Clearchannel radio just to load it up with 3.4 billion in debt they pay to themselves as bonuses while clearchannel goes bankrupt and liberal talk radio is canceled all over the nation. To have no liberal talk radio stations in san Francisco OR Portland Ore is prima facie evidence that Bain has no intention whatsoever of serving the public good. Bain needs to be broken up before they do more damage to the country.

Another:
>>SHAME on Bain Capital-owned Clear Channel (isn’t Bain the one with Mitt Romney as majority stockholder?!) killing KPOJ, the only commercial Progressive talk radio station in Portland, one of the nation’s most progressive cities, while leaving their two “competing” Clear Channel-owned Rightwing stations in the same market intact. As well as a Seattle owned progressive radio show. How many others to come?! NO, NO, NO. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME. Everyone, let’s fight this right of free speech AND force the courts to issue injunctions on anti-trust laws. PLEASE! IT’S ALL OF US AT RISK - AGAIN - OF THE POWERFUL AND RICH.

Full meltdown mode continues. And it’s all OUR fault, darn it :) And for the record, liberals, the airwaves do NOT belong to the people. They belong to companies great and small that invest money and pay for the right to broadcast WHAT THEY WANT (freedom of speech/choice) and what will make money. Liberal talk doesn’t make money. Sports (or
conservative talk) does.

But clearly the far right controls much of the media don’t they? And note the bit about the “only commercial prog talk station in town”. Yes, the only commercial one. I am sure there are some non-commercial ones living off taxpayer
dollars. It’s called NPR...

[danielmryan]

In a way, it's not that surprising that this article was published in the New York Times. In their heyday, Progressives were explicitly elitist. In the 1920s, for example, the books of Walter Lippmann was the friendly and earnest analog for H.L. Mencken's Notes On Democracy. I recall Lippmann giving the book a favourable, if guarded, review. As I'm sure you know, Progressives never quite shucked off their roots.

[SuziQ]

This is thoughtful. The liberals are winning those groups primarily because so many of them in the US are failing and so they look to Obama/Dems/gubmnt to be their Dad/family. He says if these people were successfully functional then they wouldn't vote Dems.

I wish it were true that when they become economically successful they quit voting Democrat, But many will stay with the party, and it's for that very same reason you'll find so many Italians, Jews and Irish voting for Democrats. When their grand-parents got off the boats, the Democrat ward bosses were there to help them get work, find a place to live, and in return, get their votes. This wasn't done by government spending, but by politicians building their bases. And it was in sharp contrast to what the immigrants perceived as the greedy business owners.

This sort of thing tends to make people loyal for life, and we've seen that played out for the past 80 years. Even though the Democrat voters continued to move up the economic ladder, they have the memory of their sainted Grandmother voting straight Democrat all her life, and talking bad about the business owners of her day, who were likely Republican.